Lights, Camera, Action! — Capital Citizenne

It is high time for a photography school update (lest you think all I do is go to concerts and watch tennis). After getting the fundamentals and becoming comfortable shooting in Manual mode in the first week of my course (end enjoying a week off immediately following), I have moved on to more specialized, week-long sessions, ranging from studio lighting to photojournalism/street photography to portraits to food and product. Last week, I completed my Studio Lighting course, and as you might imagine, fitting even the basics of working with professional lighting into one week was intense!

We worked through concepts like Rembrandt lighting and paramount lighting, using different types of light formers (standard reflectors, beauty dishes, soft boxes, snoods, oh my!) and different combinations of key, hair and background lighting. To start, my classmates and I rotated being the Photographer, the Assistant and the Model (I absolutely cringed every time I had to be the "model" - I signed up to be behind the camera, not in front of it!). But by the end of the week, we were working with actual models - though I must say, I think my classmates made excellent models!

Rembrandt lighting with Faye

Hair Lighting with Nathalie

One of the best things about this class was the way it helped me identify and develop my aesthetic or style as a photographer. I went into the class knowing I liked natural-looking, often monochrome or pastel looking, portraits (Mario Testino's book of portraits of Princess Diana and Richard Avedon's portraits are among my favorites), and this class not only solidified that these are the kind of pictures I want to take, but also taught me how to begin to achieve this style.

"I usually try to make my images look like they just exist, like no effort was put into it." - Mario Testino

I also had a lot of fun experimenting with other styles along the way, including this shoot with my classmate Ian. I wanted a somewhat "film noir" lighting set up, achieved with a standard reflector on a boom stand, held by our amazing co-instructor G (those things are NOT light).

On Thursday and Friday, we brought in the "real" models: Cliff and Soraya. With Cliff, we were instructed to pair up and replicate an image from Rankin's Portraits. My lovely classmate Nathalie and I both zero-ed in on this image of Forest Whitaker and did our best to recreate it with actor / model Cliff:

After trying to recreate the image, we each got a few minutes with Cliff to do some "freestyle" shots, learning to communicate with the model to get the shots we wanted. As you can (hopefully) see, Cliff was great to work with!

On Friday, we met Soraya, an aspiring West End musical theater actress. Having packed an entire suitcase full of outfit options, she was a little horrified when I asked her to stay in the t-shirt she arrived wearing, but once I explained the set-up she was game.

Just like Cliff, Soraya was fabulous to work with. I was pleased and honored that both models seemed very happy with the images I shot, requesting copies to use in their future endeavors.

After spending last week in the studio, hammering out technical details and getting the lighting "just right," I have done a total 180, and am now taking my photojournalism and street photography course. Given that I prefer a natural/ambient lighting aesthetic, I am hopeful that I will be able to apply some of the lighting concepts I learned last week to my efforts this week!