Pixiq

Lighting is not only about bringing out mood and detail; it is also about hiding imperfections, and this is where you must arrange your lighting to suit your model or subject. Hard, high contrast lighting isn’t going to work unless your model is very photogenic. Diffusing the light is the answer for most subjects—it softens the light and the results are very pleasing, especially for people photos.

White Nylon Cloth

Another very useful item for anyone who shoots digital people pictures under natural light is the very opposite of high tech—it’s a large piece of white nylon parachute material, which we always throw into our camera case. You can get it on Canal Street in New York City, or Google sources online. You can use this as a reflector (to bounce available light into shadow areas of the subject), as a diffuser (to modify or block harsh light falling on the subject), or even stretch it between light stands and shoot through it to get a romantic, soft-focus effect. It also makes a very good diffuser for a huge bank light—we can light a whole room that way. If you stretch it 20 feet (6.1 meters), put six strobes behind it, and take the shot, you can get some amazing images. It’s an incredible thing, you don’t have to carry bank lights; you don’t have to carry diffusers—just stands, clamps, and this bolt of material. You can shoot it thin or you can double it—it’s totally versatile. You can just shoot right through it, or put it on an umbrella and bounce through it to achieve really soft lighting. It’s terrific. I’ve been using it for years to light both large and small areas, and since I’m in Florida now and I shoot at the beach so often, it has become an indispensible tool (a big, transparent umbrella works the same way). My only caution about using a big bolt of parachute nylon is this: Over the years you’ll have to buy a new one every now and then because it yellows, and when it yellows, so do your photos.

Reflectors

Flex Fills are my reflectors of choice; you can use white reflectors for unaltered light or gold-tinted ones if you want golden highlights to emphasize a late-afternoon glow. I never leave my studio without at least two of them. If you use the white side, it’s a soft fill, and the silver side produces a more contrasty fill. They make a gold one for a warm look, but with digital I don’t use it because we can add that in Adobe Camera Raw. The silver reflector can look like flash if the sunlight is strong and the reflector is close to the subject.

Bounce Light

I mentioned a transparent umbrella above to shoot through, but the softest light of all comes from light bounced into a reflective umbrella or off of a large white surface. The larger the bounce surface, the more it diffuses the light. This soft light is great for making anyone look wonderful.

Color Casts

It’s important to remember that any diffusion or bounce device will add its hue to your pictures, which can be beneficial or not. Even bounce flash can result in an altered and unexpected color cast depending on what you’re bouncing it off of. A brown or green ceiling or wall will tint the hue of any white light you bounce off of it (such as a 5500K flash), and this will be clearly visible in your pictures.

That even applies to floors, as well. For my studio floors, I installed light colored laminate wood flooring; it looked almost white. Well, unbeknownst to me, this material has a little pink in it that you can’t see with the naked eye. I couldn’t figure out why there was a slightly pink cast in my pictures, but it turned out that the flooring was the source of the color cast. I realized that when I put Plexiglas on top of the flooring or pulled the seamless background paper all the way out on to the floor, the pink cast disappeared from my images. When I discovered this, I actually did an experiment. The next time we shot, we rolled the seamless paper out and sat our subjects on that, and then we put a piece of Plexiglas down at one point on the floor and sat them on that, and we didn’t have the problem with either. The Plexiglas gives you a little added reflection too, which I like, but the most important thing is that when I use the Plexiglas and place subjects on it, there’s no pink. So, it was definitely the floor. The message: Color reflections from various surfaces can do funny things that you have to watch for. They aren’t always negative effects—and sometimes you can even use them to your advantage—but you should at least be aware of them.