Day 3 Lighting Series: You Already Know the Hardest Part
Welcome to day 3 of the lighting series! My goal for this series is to help people feel more comfortable with working with artificial lighting. In case you missed any of the other lessons, here's a quick recap.
On day 1, we talked about what the actual cost of working exclusively with natural light is. This could be an emotional cost, like causing stress or making you like a fraud because you can't consistently produce beautiful work for your clients. It could also be a financial cost, because you may have to cancel shoots when the weather is bad.
Then on day 2, we talked about a lot of the fears and misconceptions photographers have about working with strobes and flash. They may worry that artificial light is ugly and equipment may be expensive. It also could just feel intimidating to learn!
I ended yesterday's lesson talking about how most photographers already know the hardest part of learning to work with strobes and flash. Let's dive on in!
HIGHLIGHTS
Light is the foundation of photography.
Now one of the most essential skills, if not THE most essential skill a photographer can have, is the ability to see and understand light. Light is the foundation on which photography is built, and understanding how to see and work with it—that's our superpower as photographers.
The secret to creating gorgeous light with strobes and flash is taking what you already know about natural light, specifically how to work with window light, and applying it to working with a flash.
If you can work with the sun shining through a window, you can work with a strobe or a flash shining through a softbox—the same rules apply! Understanding how light works and behaves is the hard part, and you already know that. Light is light!
You know that if you are working with a big window, your light is going to big, bright and on the softer side than if you were working with a small window. You already know that how close or far away your subject is from window impacts the look of your light. You probably already know that if you add diffusion to a window, you are going to soften the light.
Whether you realize it or not, you already know what size light modifier you would want to own. If you like big windows, get a big modifier! You know how close you want to bring your light and modifier to your subject. Just ask yourself where you would place them if you were working with a window. The same rules apply!
You already know the hard stuff.
The ONLY thing you really need to learn are some of the mechanics–how to meter when using artificial light, how to adjust your power, how the power of your light impacts the look you are trying to create and all of that stuff is pretty easy!
Don’t let artificial light scare you.
We see people come into The Missing Link, my lighting community, without ever working with a strobe or flash and have it mastered within a week. That is because the system I’ve created for teaching strobes and flash is based on taking what you already know about using window light and doing it with strobes and flash.
The great thing about my method is that it doesn’t require a ton of gear. Everything I teach is done with just one light, which means you can take it with you on location.
The takeaway is this: if artificial light is something that has always intimidated you, understand that you already know the hardest part. The only thing you really need to learn is the mechanics, and that is what we’ll be talking about during tomorrow's episode!
Tomorrow is the last lesson in this four-part series, I'm going to walk you through my lighting framework. I'll see you then!
