When you’re lighting a stationary subject for a photograph, the usual approach is to position your lights and leave them there while you make your exposures.If you’re relying on your camera’s built-in flash as the sole source of illumination, there is no other choice. However, there are effective alternatives to the static or one-flash mindset that you can use to good effect in creating better pictures. Let’s take a look at a few of them.
During my years working in an electronics lab, I was often called upon to photograph fairly bulky and complex machinery. This was usually done on 4×5 Polaroid film. Since I had to carry a case with a big, heavy camera, film, exposure meter, accessories, and a sturdy tripod, the last thing I wanted do was add several lights and stands to the load I had to schlep to some remote equipment bay.
A simple lighting technique that saved my back on such occasions was one I learned in school–“painting with light”. The only lighting equipment I needed to make detailed, pro quality photos of these subjects was a single tungsten lamp on a long cord!
Here’s how to make optimum use of such “fancy” gear.
First, establish your exposure. The bulb should be held high near the camera position. Stop the camera’s lens way down to get a basic exposure of at least two seconds—five seconds is better because it will give you more time to “paint.” To get exposures in this range you may need to shut off most room lights. If you’re making a color digital photo, set the camera’s white balance to “tungsten” and the ISO to 100-200.
When you’re ready, hold the bulb overhead at arm’s length and the same distance from the subject as it was for making the meter reading. Open the shutter on B, or set a 2- to 10-sec shutter speed, and swing the bulb from side to side. You can step to the side as well if the subject being recorded is too wide for your arm’s length to reach. Moving the bulb spreads the light around and kills most annoying shadows. The result, if properly executed, will be a smoothly lit scene, free of sharp shadows.
If, after checking your Polaroids or LCD images, one section seems to need a bit more light, repeat the process, and simply slow down the arm-swinging in that area.
I usually used a “rough-service” 200-watt bulb in a Smith-Victor reflector when I was photographing on ISO 400 B&W Polaroid film. They last longer than photofloods and can take more knocking around as well. If you’re shooting color, use 250- to 500-watt photofloods. Their color temperatures are better defined than that of regular tungsten bulbs and you can compensate any color shifts with filters or by adjusting the white balance in a digital camera. Digital cameras with custom white balance controls work best.
You can certainly use this technique with smaller lamps if your subject is not as large as a ton of machinery. For the still life of items from my collection of antique scientific instruments shown below, I used the my trusty Photogenic Minispot, but any similar light will do. As you can see, you can get soft lighting from even a spotlight if you move it around enough. This was a 5-second exposure at f/22, at an ISO 200 setting on a digital camera.
You can use a similar technique with small electronic flashes–but with one caveat. If any shadows are cast on the background by the subject, you will get multiple shadows. This usually looks weird! Multiple “pops” from a small flash work best when you get no overlapping shadows. Also, this technique requires more open shutter time than you may think you need, to allow for the flash to recycle.
Polaroid or regular film would likely work better than digital for open shutter times of a minute or more due to the noise you often get with long digital exposures. With flash, exposure is figured on the cumulative light of every pop, assuming that the light from each overlaps to a great degree.
Here’s how it’s done. For two pops, the exposure is one stop less than for a single flash. For four pops, stop down two stops; with eight pops, stop down three stops. Any more pops and we’re getting a bit ridiculous! Remember that if there is little or no lighting coverage overlap, the exposure is the same as for one pop.
A variation on using multi-pop electronic flash is often used with larger subjects, primarily to achieve dramatic effects rather than for smooth, even lighting or shadow filling. An example is lighting a smaller building or intimate landscape at night.
Here, there won’t be any significant lighting coverage overlap and your exposure will be based on a single flash. You may need to do multiple pops on each area if your flash is too small. Use the exposure multiplying factors I just described for overlapping flashes.
To demonstrate this technique, I used a rather ordinary railroad bridge near my home as the subject. As you can see from the daylight photo there is nothing particularly eye-catching about this span. But at night, I could change the lighting to make the mood a lot “spookier”.
I needed only two flash pops to get what I was after—one near the camera position and one several yards to the left. The flash I used was a Vivitar 5600 with the optional high-power zoom head. It has an indoor GN of 300 at ISO 400.
One important tip for this kind of shot: The skies should be quite dark and cloudless if they show in the scene. Otherwise, having the shutter open long enough to take the picture could result in an overly bright sky.
Alternatively, you can have an assistant block the lens with a dark card or a hat between flashes. This will minimize the effect of light coming from the sky. It’s easiest to use the flash in automatic exposure mode so long as the flash will be used within its maximum stated flash-to-subject operating distance.
Another thing to bear in mind when using a flash outdoors as that flash guide numbers and autoflash distance specs are based on their use within a “typical” room with average reflectivity—that is, one with light-colored walls and a ceiling height of about eight feet. Outdoors, with essentially zero reflectivity, you’ll lose all of the spill, causing your maximum flash-to-subject distance to diminish by about one stop.
So if your flash has a maximum autoflash distance of 22 feet for the film speed and aperture selected, it will drop to approximately 16 feet outdoors. For drama, use a wide-angle lens on your camera and set the flash’s coverage to telephoto. Doing so will minimize any overlapping of the lighting. Having the flash set to telephoto will also give your flash a larger effective guide number.
One more thing to watch out for when painting with flash outdoors is keeping the flash itself out of the picture. Hold it behind a bush or just keep it out of the camera’s field-of-view. Also, it’s best to wear dark clothing to lessen the chance of your accidentally showing up in the shot. However, if you are working along a dark country road like I was for these shots, wear white to be more visible to passing motorists. You can even add interest to the photo by including your silhouette in the scene.
Use your body to keep the direct flash from hitting your camera. To add more pizzazz to the bridge photo I moved the camera to the left to include the road. It has a 10 MPH “S” curve, which resulted in the taillight streaks you see here. I only added one flash pop in making this photo.
I find it easiest to pre-compose the night shots and plan the camera positions during daylight. It’s a bit difficult to do these things in the dark—even with a flashlight handy. Indeed, the ground around where I placed my tripod for the first bridge photos shown here was rampant with poison ivy, and I wouldn’t have known where it was without some daylight scouting! Take lots of shots and use a digital camera if possible to help refine your technique.
Give these “moving” lighting techniques a try. They are something a bit different, but they’ve saved the day for me on many occasions and I’m sure they’ll work just as well for you.
