A long time ago when I was starting out in this little Midwest city showing my work around, a lot of the comments were “it’s so dark & moody”, “are you sure this isn’t too dark?”, “why such deep shadows?” and the like. Well, it did win me some pretty handsome jobs, but I was almost getting a complex out of it. Then I happened to meet a guy who asked if I liked old B&W movies much. “Yeah”, I said “why do you ask?” He replied: “Well, your photography really reminds me of early German Expressionism and Film Noir.” This guy had hand written a list of over 900 movies, directors, cinematographers, and actors from notable older noir movies, and let me photocopy the list. Ever since then, I’ve tried to keep watching ones I haven’t seen, but have been hooked on what feels like my style ever since. Ah, there’s nothing new under the sun…or a good Fresnel.
A simple, classic, two light film noir setup
So, we’ve been kicking around the idea of trying to do more thematic shoots for consumer work around the studio. The idea here would be to bring a more commercial flair to the consumer work we offer too. With Valentine’s Day upon us, we thought we’d give the process some time to see if we could pull off two completely different looks with one couple in under an hour. So, we called our friends Amy & Todd to see if they’d be game for modeling for us on short notice, and they were. We wanted to be able to offer shooting bright, campy, kitschy shots as well as shots with very dramatic, romantic lighting. I think we got it:
Kitschy & cheezy all the way.
Admittedly, that’s pretty darn cheezy, and the point of the shoot was to be able to offer a completely different look in the same session. So, I raised the background scrim, swung the boom mounted umbrella out of the way, raised the background light, removed its gel, and struck up the DeSisti 2k Fresnel:
Deep, dramatic lighting of the same couple just minutes later.
Octabox 78" double weighted on boom. Notice that even at just 1,200w/s it's managing to match the raw sunlight pouring onto the studio floor in front of it. This could prove useful for outdoor synchro sun work.
Okay, so I light with panel style scrims a lot, everyone knows this. It’s an old Hollywood way of controlling light, and I’ve found it to be the most versatile, flexible, beautiful way of setting the proper diffused value of subjects. Now, I’m not opposed to softboxes, nor do I have anything against them philosophically. In fact, on a recent location shoot for an executive portrait I kept reminding myself how much less time and fuss it would have been to just have brought a medium sized softbox.
Even in the studio I think softboxes have their place. Although I think we have a nice sized studio, we don’t have an aircraft hangar, and so controlling spill and bounce can be challenging at times. I think that this year we might just invest in some nice Plume Wafers for just this sort of thing. But, I have to say that since we already have great rectangular panel scrims, I still wanted to have a nice, round-ish softbox too. Round really has its place: both for the even, radial fall-off and of course for the shape of catchlights it creates in subjects’ eyes. Well, I took a look at the beautiful, hand sewn Chimera OctaPlus 57 model and then the fabric grids for it. Then, after I picked myself up off the floor over the $2,500 cost, I started looking around. After all, I really only wanted to see if such a monster would suit my needs as a “softbox” without sinking $2,5k into the experiment.
Alright, alright – so I’m a big believer in HUGE light sources, but that’s probably just me. My all time favorite lighting source is the 78″x78″ scrim, but that requires two rolling stands and a third for the source. That’s a lot of set space. But, I also like small, controllable point sources like fresnels, optical spots and beauty dishes. Having a mix of the two always seems to suit my shooting style best. Interestingly enough, I managed to get the best of both worlds out of this thing, thanks to my friend Tim Stotz, who came over to the studio to be the subject of my tests. As we were trying the different combinations of interior baffles, front diffusers, etc, Tim suggested we try one with just the bare bulb raw light inside the octabank and simply add the fabric grid to the front. Bingo – awesome result! A large, soft-ish light source with direction, and an interesting cookaloris pattern to boot:
Tim Stotz in front of 78" Octabox with just the fabric grid attached. This awesome effect is thanks to Tim Stotz's suggestion - one I never had considered.
See? It’s always great to have other creatives around when you’re trying new things. Thanks Tim!
Then again, it’s important to be able to take advantage of such a huge, contained source’s ability to control the soft diffused quality with its double diffusion & fabric grid all in place. Below you can see the effects of the same octabank on the same cyc at about the same distance. The only difference between this and the shot of Tim above is that this time instead of having the light at subject height from 45º left of camera, I had it directly over the camera aimed down at around 30º to the subject on axis with the lens:
The perfect "North light" too. Short of a skylight, this is where it's at for this look.
Okay, so the thing is a beast to handle, weighs more than it should, doesn’t really have a shallow profile, and frankly is a bit floppier & sloppier than I suspect is the Chimera version. And, I probably ought to upgrade its mounting with some true grip gear so that we’re not putting so much gaff on the flash head’s bayonet mount. But, the real appeal for me is the 33 sq.ft. of soft, contained light that is directional, radial, and in this case somewhat focusable.