I can already hear you from last weeks post. Sure Kevin can do all that great one light stuff in the studio and on commercial jobs, but what about at a wedding? There is no way he can pull that off, because he is not going to drag a big hotlight along to a wedding!
Well you are right in the fact that I would never bring a huge hotlight to a wedding, but you already have a fresnel head in your bag and it’s called your flash unit.
Any flash head that has a zoom lens in it has a fresnel lens in it. You just need to learn how to use it. If you look at the shot above, it looks like one of my fashion shots. You can get this effect by just manually zooming the flash and having the light coming from above.
We all hate the light at receptions and the distracting backgrounds that come with it. One of my favorite techniques for dealing with this is to use the zoom on the flash head to create dramatic lighting and have a hard fall off to black. I use a TTL cord so I can hold the flash high above my head and pointing down at the subject. I zoom the flash head to telephoto and then use a wide angle lens. What this does is sends a small beam of light that lights just the subject and not the background. It works amazingly well and is really easy to do.
Once you have the lighting on the subject the way you like it, you control the background with your shutter speed. The faster the shutter speed the darker your background as you are letting in less ambient light.
Simple, clean, elegant, and all done with your fresnel light that you didn’t even know you had!
- Kevin Focht
To see more tips on lighting and retouching check out LeftTurnCreative.com or to see more of Kevin’s work go to LeftTurnStudio.com
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3 Comments at "One Light Magic Part II"
You can also put a snoot on your flash. I found it easier to do than mess around with manually zooming the flash. I use a cheapo piece of Foam sheeting and a rubber band.
Could you just shoot it with a bracket and zoom in manually? Or do you have to have it way higher/hold it in your arm? I’d be afraid just holding it up that I’d not aim it right and screw things up. I traditionally shoot with a bracket, fong dome, and a 16-35 for dance images- thoughts?
I guess you could shoot with a bracket, but that ties you down to one look. I like to change the angles as i shoot for different looks. I use the fong dome for some things, but for drama I zoom in with the flash head and shoot with it pointing down.
Kevin
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