19 May 2012
Mohammadpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh
it was the first ever Idea Workshop at Idea House.... it was the first "Step into the Light" workshop; a basic workshop on lighting.... we had some great guys there as participants.... we did a lot of experiments and learned all the way.... and more importantly, we had a lotta fun.... it wasn't possible if we didn't have the kind of participatory environment there.... it was important to make mistakes and learn from those.... starting from a perfect world never gives us the feeling of improvement.... and the rationale behind a good lighting setup would've remained hidden.... as such, the learning would've remained incomplete....
we picked the only available flash in our camera bag and took it off camera.... we stared with hard light and tried to erase the misconception that only soft light could produce good images.... we had some great volunteers from our audience.... Hasib, Sunny, Sabbir and Tushar, all were great participants and were ready to feature in front of the camera for the sake of learning... this also showed one very important thingg, and that is, you don't need professional models to produce good pictures.... remember that not all of your subjects have a model look.... and its important that the portrait shows some traits of the subject....
we changed position of light to demonstrate how it changes picture.... we worked on manual settings all the way to show what can be achieved with a little bit of manual control.... we didn't touch the shutter speed and ISO for the whole session.... we only played with aperture and flash power... we even changed our camera and switched to Hasib's D90 to show that cameras didn't matter at all.... then it was the turn of softening the light.... we used a reflector with the flash and then replaced the reflector with a Lastolite 24" Ezybox Hotshoe softbox.... we practiced controlling the light without sacrificing soft light....
it was then the turn of controlling the light even further.... we introduced a grid spot and changed the whole context.... we also played with the shadows as well, not forgetting that shadows can give mood to a picture....
before we switched to the last part, we also experimented with a reflector as a second light source.... we tried to soften the light by eliminating some of the shadows... the last part of the experimentation was with gels... we created a colourful backdrop and only worked with silhouette.... we wish we had more time with gels to play with... but at least we had some time with it.... all the while, we didn't switch from our basic theme of sticking to one speedlite, and also keeping it practical for most kind of shoots.... we didn't want to indulge in learning things that would never 'see the light'....
during the whole session, our setup was a D700 + Nikkor 85mm f1.8 lens and a D90 + Nikkor 50mm f1.4 lens.... flash was a single YN-560; trigger was an Elinchrom Skyport radio trigger.... we had great assistants among our participants who acted as voice-activated-lightstands (VALs).... that also gave the participants an understanding of light placements.... we used different grip equipment to help with light placement....
depending of the feedback of the participants, we may consider lengthening the workshop time by some hours to have more time behind some more setups and also to introduce some practice shots from the participants.... we may also have another session like this in the near future depending on our reader feedback.... lets see where it goes....
stay tuned for a lot more.... :)
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