Location Portrait Lighting workshop

Simon Fraser University Burnaby BC Canada

• 3 photographers maximum

• 3 hours of hands on practice

• Get the same look with your own gear

• Working with professional model

• Bonus PDF training material

Learn how to:

• Master location portrait lighting

• Blend strobe with ambient

• Get the natural look with artificial light

• Where to position your light

The Goal
Lighting is critical for the success of our photography. Artificial light like flash or strobe are commonly used by portrait photographers. They can greatly enhance our creativity when blending them with natural light. But, lots of photographers are having trouble making this look natural. Many times people got disappointed by the flashy look. When using artificial lights with ambient, it should look like you didn’t use them at all. In other words, your lights should be used in a way that they look like part of the ambient. There must be a harmony between the lighting on our subject and lighting on the background. Not only the amount of light (exposure) must match, also the quality. The quality is always more important than quantity. It’s much easier to fix a exposure error than faking the lighting there was not even there

The variables
No matter where you shoot, what gear you use, there are 4 variables that will ultimately decide the look you’ll get. I’ll list them in priority from high to low: the angle; the distance; the power level; the modifier. Many photographers believe making the lighting looks natural simply means the light output needs to be subtle. This is actually only one of the 4 variables that we need to with and it’s not even the most important one. This is the reason why sometimes no matter what lighting output level you choose, it just doesn’t look right.

The Formulas
The combination of these 4 variables: angle, distance, power level and choice modifier will be your lighting “formula”. There are almost unlimited lighting formulas, because of the unlimited lighting conditions, like locations, weather, time of day, angles of sun, angles of camera. The reason why watching behind the scenes or copying lighting setup won’t get you too far is because it’s just copying the result without the understanding of the development of that setup. The key is not about remembering the formula but learn how to develop your own. Only after you can develop your own lighting formula are you guaranteed to get consistent good results.

This workshop is about teaching people how to develop their own lighting formula

When: September 26th 2:00 - 5:00 pm

Where: Simon Fraser University