| Fashion Light - Simple and Effective |
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| Written by Chris Grey | |||||||
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In the realm of fashion photography, in particular of fashion advertising, one style of lighting seems to dominate the rest. Flat, almost perfectly even light over the background accent a model who’s lit from one side and who shows deeper than usual shadows on the unlit side. The net result is an image that projects a heightened reality, something larger than life. As you can imagine, there are a number of ways to achieve that kind of lighting. In a dedicated fashion production studio, for example, the background might be a large cyclorama (aka “infinity wall” or “cove”), a large, perfectly flat wall with a built-in sweep at the bottom to eliminate a sharp corner. That perfect wall might be lit with both floor and ceiling-mounted lights, painstakingly feathered across the surface until exposure values are consistent across the entire field. It’s a difficult scenario to set up, and no one in the studio is too anxious to tear it down after the shoot’s over, either. I don’t have the luxury of that much space at my studio. Because of the wide variety of work that crosses my threshold: portrait, food, product, etc., etc., my sets are always changing. Consequently, I’ve found a short cut or two for shooting similar fashion images with just one light that you might find useful for your own work. The key to the first setup is nothing more than height. As I explained in my book, Master Lighting Guide for Portrait Photographers, and in a recent ShootSmarter.com column , Specularity and the Depth of Light, light gets dimmer over distance. This is a very dry Law of Physics known as the Inverse Square Law which states that light that has to travel as far from Point B to Point C as it did from Point A to Point B will be only 1/4th as strong when it gets to Point C. You can easily prove it with a flash meter, but just trust me for now. I put my largest softbox, 4’x6’, as high as I could, butting it right up against the 13.5’ ceiling (smaller softboxes will work nicely, although the shadows will be harder), and aimed it down at a severe angle. I wanted to feather the light, keeping it as evenly distributed as possible over the model and the seamless paper background.
 To ramp up the drama of this beautiful light even more, I moved the light and the black gobo even closer to the model, then raised it another foot or so to maintain the angle of the nose shadow (there is no set formula for this). Being so close means the strength of the light will fall off faster while the nearness of the gobo assures that very little of it will be bounced back. If you look closely, you can see the edge of the gobo on the right (I can easily fix it in Photoshop, but I wanted you to see it). I’d been shooting with a hand-held camera, zooming in and out and moving as I pleased. I was so taken with this expression and composition that, even though I saw the edge of the bookend as I swung into the shot, I didn’t much care if the card intruded or not. My eye, brain, and finger were at one with the Universe. 
Our resident Lighting Wizard, Chris Grey, is inviting all of you Canon shooters to submit your best image to him for possible inclusion in the Gallery section of his upcoming book, Canon: The Ultimate Photographer’s Guide. He’s looking for images that are both stunning and showcase the technology that made them possible. Deadline for submissions is April 15th! Visit the Special UserForum For Guidelines and Image submissions Here, or Email Chris directly for more details, at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . © Chris Grey | |||||||
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