Chasing Your Shadow: The Secret Sauce You've Been Missing - Video

[Martin Vronsky]

Quote

When you hear the word lighting, most photographers are going to think about adding one light to a scene. Some might even think about adding two or three lights. But most of us aren’t going to think about a key aspect of lighting, and that’s because for many of us this might not seem like lighting at all. That’s probably because when it’s there it might go unnoticed, and when it’s missing it might not be identifiable. And this missing element is what’s holding many photographers back from doing well in completions, enjoying the look of a print or feeling like there’s a level of refinement they can’t achieve. But for most of us, it’s hard to put a finger on it.

In this article, today we are going to explore all the ways you can remedy this mystery problem and review what choices you might consider to improve your images.

A photographer asked me to critique his work and when I looked over his photos, his faces were well illuminated, his subjects were separated from the background through a combination of edge lights, hair lights and background lights, but the shadow details were missing. Where did they go? While this can be a style choice, it’s often not on purpose. Sure, you might want to maximize drama with hard light for a beauty shot or while using an optical snoot to project a sharp pattern, but often times an image will be elevated if the viewer can see a range of tones, similar to what we see constantly with our own eyes. And speaking of eyes, think about it this way—if you were a makeup artist, it wouldn’t matter how good you were at applying eye shadow if the foundation was too light or the wrong color. The shadows are our foundation. During my critique, I suggested that he could use bounce cards, reflectors or even an extra light to illuminate his shadows ever so slightly in order to maximize details.

Chapters

• 00:00 Introduction
• 02:30 Passive Fill
• 06:54 Passive Fill Demo
• 09:19 Passive Fill Outdoors
• 11:18 Active Fill
• 14:43 On Axis   Fill 
• 15:51 Active FIll Demo
• 19:02  Different Fill Sources
• 20:42 Conclusion