Lighting’s Effect On Details

Lighting’s Effect On Details

by William Lulow

With today’s photography largely based on digital imaging to aid everything from exposure to focus and more, it can become an interesting exercise to see how the same assignment can be handled differently by different photographers. I have often said that a portrait is probably more about the photographer than the person he or she is shooting, because each photographer develops over time, a particular style and method of obtaining the images they want in order to satisfy their clients or themselves! With that in mind, there can be various solutions to any number of lighting “problems” depending on the photographer’s style. I recently saw a video where the photographer used 23 lights to do one assignment. This looked to be an assignment that involved describing how each light was positioned, used and modified to obtain a specific result that was aimed at other photographers for the purpose of selling lighting equipment. In order to get the interest of other photographers, those who were “equipment oriented,” using that many lights had to be made to look easy, otherwise it would be of no interest to them.

The reality is that there are many solutions to specific lighting problems. It all is determined by several factors:

1. The photographer and his or her style of shooting
2. The requirements of the client
3. How the image(s) will be used
4. What the audience for the image(s) will be
5. The subject(s) being photographed

Here are a couple of the projects I have worked on and the descriptions of what went into the lighting setups and why.

Hanes Hosiery “Hanes Fair Lady” Campaign:

This was a series of photographs for a campaign that was on-going for a while and had to be kind of “timeless” in the way they looked. Each outfit was a period piece that was used to highlight the stockings, which, of course, was Hanes’ product. But the images had to evoke a sense of style and create interest in how the stockings could add a finishing touch to various styles. The first two shots in this triptyk were shot with the same background at this location, which was a New York City townhouse rented for the shoot. The first was a black dress, black gloves, clear stockings with a gorgeous, pink applique in the front. Since the dress was black, it couldn’t be shot against any kind of dark background. In order to showcase all of its intricacies, the background had to be light. Two flash heads were placed in the room and aimed into it. Each was positioned so that some of the light would spill over and light the edge of the dress as well as the gloves. Lighting the front was a matter of setting up a big umbrella mainlight and a fill-in light on the opposite side of the model. There had to be enough detail showing in the black fabric so that it wasn’t completely black.

The next image was a cream-colored evening dress. This image was shot on the same spot as the black dress to the left. Since the dress was light colored, the background needed to be dark, but with a little detail still showing. Here we turned off the lights that lit the room in the previous shot and the dress just “popped” off the background. Mainlight and fill were pretty much the same as with the black dress, but just toned down a bit. Since the speed of the flash basically makes the exposure, the shutter was slowed down slightly to allow for more ambient light to enter the camera from the darkened room’s windows. This image used only two lights.

My technique with lighting has always entailed using as few lights as necessary to get the job done and create interest. When shooting fashion photographs, there is a lot to consider. One of the main ideas to get straight from the beginning is whether the images will be used to sell the garments themselves, or to create interest in them. Sometimes, depending on the clothes and who is modelling them, both the clothes themselves as well as the figures they are on are being sold at the same time. For catalogs or sales sheets, the style is more important than the overall “feel” of the shot. In this case, the “buyers” are actual garment people who are viewing the pages with the purpose of selling the garments themselves. If the main “clients” for the photographs are advertising agencies or manufacturers themselves, creating interest in the styles becomes more important. This is when the models take on a more important role as people who can “sell” the style of the garment rather than just the garment itself.

All of this underscores the notion that for any photographer, the audience or viewers of the images should always dictate the kind of images made if the shoot is to accomplish its goals.

This is another outtake from the above shoot. Here is an example of an image that is strictly designed to showcase the style itself:

And here is another:

When I was shooting a lot of fashion images, it was often important for the client (and hence, the customer) to see just about every stitch in the garment itself. This was the difference between catalog fashion photography and that which was made to create interest in the “idea” of the clothes themselves. These were two very different goals that we had to keep in mind when shooting garments. And, it was also why much of the photography of fashions meant to sell the garments was done with large-format view cameras. Even the most famous fashion photographers of the 1950s and 1960s, as well as up through the 1970s, used large cameras. It was the likes of Richard Avedon who began to use medium-format cameras to allow more freedom of movement into the world of fashion photography. The 35mm camera, which wasn’t used that much for fashion, had been around since the late 1920s or 1930s. The Leica was actually invented around 1913 or 1914, but didn’t hit its stride until the 1930s. It then became the camera of choice for photojournalists, but not for fashion photographers. The Rolleiflex, a medium-format camera, was not invented until 1929 or so and finally came into wide usage in the 1950s. Here’s what the Rolleiflex looked like:

This is the actual Rolleiflex that belonged to famed photographer, Irving Penn, which he used for many of his fashion images. It was usually mounted on a tripod, but sometimes was hand-held.

So, the lighting was still key and the larger format cameras just showed off the detail to a much greater degree.