Saturday, October 20, 2012

Simple light works well.


I get lots of e-mail asking me to talk about tricky lighting with multiple, radio slaved flashes but the reality is that I prefer simple, one light set ups for most stuff.  And most of my personal portraits are lit by only two lights and a reflector. I think there is something valuable about mastering one or two lights before even considering all the tricky and blingy lighting set ups one sees on the web or in books the raison d' étre of which is to sell glorified lighting diagrams.

One umbrella. One light. One small reflector. Old, black and white film shot.

Untitled beautiful woman.


This young woman came to my studio with her older sister. An advertising friend of mine thought the older sister was a wonderful beauty and needed to be photographed. I disagreed. I understood at that moment how subjective human understanding of beauty could be.