Light & shoot a cube

Assignment #1 is "light and shoot a cube" It might also be called "how to use a studio strobe without blowing yourself up". The goal of this assignment is to light the studio cube with the Speedotron strobes, capture it tethered to Lightroom and all without blowing anything up. In the 7 years I've been teaching this, I am the only one to actually blow up a strobe at WPUNJ.....  You will learn so much in this class. We will begin with the scarier massive Speedotron strobes and after completing 5 assignments, we will move onto Profoto strobes for the balance of the class. When you complete the 14 assignments and final 5 images you will know more than most photo assistants!

Portraits

This subject takes 2 weeks to get through. The first week will involve Rembrandt 3/4 light and Beauty light with a white umbrella and beauty dish. Week two will teach FIlm Noir / Hollywood 1930's light and environmental portraiture where we need to light "2 zones", the background and the model, so they remain independant and don't affect each other.

Blow out background

Even with Photoshop's quick select tool, nothing is easier to strip out than an object against a 255 white background. SInce this class is all about controlling light, we'll use a meter and 2 "lighting zones" (sound familiar?) to get the background 255 white while having a person lit normally with no glare around the model. It's cool! 

Copy, Bags, Box & 3D

If you are motivated, you could begin making money with a camera as soon as you finish this assignment. We show how to combine two images lit 2 different ways to remove all of the glare on a shiny bag and how to capture and square-up a box. We'll show you how to capture and square up a framed/glass picture (with no glare) and how to capture a 3D work of art. Once you do it, you can start charging for it! Too much fun!

Food Styling with Photoshop!

We used to take turns each semester when shooting food but now that this becomes a non-repeatable class, we may just do them all. We demonstrate both food styling and lighting on this one. We disassemble/reassemble a McDonald's burger, scoop fake ice cream and combine two images to perfect the soda.

Off figure fashion

Lighting for off figure fashion involves moving lights around until you get the best texture for the material while limiting the shadows that might hide too much material. We'll demonstrate pinning, steaming and lighting on this one.

Tenting

Tenting, a lighting style, is marvelous for lighting all sorts of shiny items. We will learn a modified "Macy's" jewelry light style and show how it works for lighting all sorts of shiny things.

Table top sets

The goal of this assignment is to tell a story including a "star" and using light and focus to drive a viewer's eyes to that star. We get to make a story and then bring in props as co-stars all working together (story, props, light and focus) to drive that point home.

Rooms

This is one assignment that only happens on occasion. 

We will discuss how to use the room's natural light and just add to it slightly with strobes. We'll talk about adding lights to room seen way back. It makes things look more natural. It's another time to bring the equipment on location (within the Power Arts building that is....)

The final five

Here is the end run for this class.

So far we have learned:

How to safely operate strobes

4 types of portraits (Rembrandt, Beauty, FIlm Noir and Environmental)

How to shoot a person against a perfect white background

How to copy flat & 3D art, shoot a shiny bag & box

Food (Ice Cream or Burger & Soda)

Off figure fashion

Tenting light

Table Top Sets and

How to light a room.

Of those, we can pick a certain 10 and from those 5 to completely re-shoot, make into 300 dpi jpgs and send out for prints.

This helps you to redo your favorites and learn them even better and you'll have prints as proof when you are all done.
Remember: if it's not fun it's not worth doing!