HOW: This portrait was lit with a total of two light sources, one Orbis ringflash as the key light set to 50% power and a 22″ gridded beauty dish for fill (the beauty dish, FYI, is a plasticky mofo of the Kacey variety, which in this case was powered by two Nikon speedlights, each set to 50% power). The ringflash was boomed over the subject’s head, resting about a half of a metre above his noggin. The beauty dish was resting on the ground at about a 45 degree angle, facing upwards. Everything was triggered by Cybersyncs. It was shot with a tripod-mounted Canon 5D and a 16-35L lens zoomed out to about 20mm.
WHY: I had several objectives whilst creating this image. I wanted to maintain a relatively natural look, endeavouring to make the subject seem as though he were illuminated by available light from the room, but at the same time I wanted the image to be low key, with a slightly moody, dramatic quality. To achieve this — that is, to successfully reconcile a sense of moodiness with an ambient light feel — I decided that I would emulate one light coming from overhead (as though it were set in the ceiling of a room), and for this I would need relatively hard source to serve as the key light, but not too hard so as to make it obvious that strobes were being used. So that ruled out a barebulb strobe. After some brainstorming, I decided that what might do the trick was to boom a ringflash over the subject’s head. I thought the ringflash would function well as, when used off axis, it provides a somewhat soft, but simultaneously slightly hard and somewhat directional light — much like an overhead lamp or ceiling light.
After firing off a few test frames, I decided that the shadows left by the ringflash underneath the subject’s chin were rather harsh and unflattering. And what’s more, using only the ringflash to illuminate the image left something to be desired; there was very little sense of drama to the image and the light was not too appealing. Solution? Enter gridded beauty dish. When positioned on the ground and pointed upwards at the subject, providing maybe just a half stop less than the ringflash, the beauty dish achieved several objectives. It increased image’s ‘drama quotient’ significantly, mostly because it was acting as an ‘underlight’ — and lights positioned to function as ‘underlights’ often have a dramatic effect (an extreme example of this is the classic ‘spooky effect’ imparted to a face by holding a flashlight beneath it). The beauty dish also managed to provide a good bit of fill, successfully softening the shadows — as well as softening up the image in general, as fill lights ought to — and adding an attractive catchlight to the bottoms of the subject’s eyes. Lastly, because the beauty was gridded, it added somewhat of a circular gradient to the image, with a hotter region in the centre of the image, fading into a gradient towards the image’s edges — a sort of natural vignetting effect, if you will.
All in all, the lighting worked to achieve what I wanted. It managed to create a somewhat ambient-lit look, much like an overhead lamp or inset ceiling lamp might, whilst at the same time imparting some drama to the image. Entering ‘generalisation land’ a bit, I’ll say that I feel many times images are made to look unnatural via implementation of excessive frontal lighting — creating an unnatural look for indoor shots especially, as indoor lighting is often governed by overhead incandescent lighting and as such produces shadows to match. If your shadows and light look like they were front-lit, it can look unnatural. Indoor lighting is generally harsh as well, though not super harsh, per se, so you’ve got to be sure you don’t overdo it with the softness of the light. For environmental portraits indoors, then, you don’t want to make it look like you turned the room into a studio, prompting the viewer of the image to perhaps facetiously quip, ‘why, it looks as though this room looks like it was lit with a gaggle of softboxes!’ Or rather, in other words, when softboxes team up in gaggles and go indoors to create excessively soft lighting, it’s a bad thing. Bad. Don’t let it happen. Lest a softbox tackle you because it thought you were threatening its young, its ‘softboxlets’, if you will. But you won’t, because that would be acting out a lame joke, and that’s even lamer, methinks. *End tangential indulgences*
Have you ever set out to photograph something and then afterwards come away with something you totally did not expect? Well, such was the case when photographing my parents about a year ago. I decided to photograph them in the super-ornate and upscale-seeming ‘living room’ of the house, which, ironically enough, no one ever remotely lives in, as it serves more or less as a ‘trophy room’ of sorts, and is, quite honestly, unlike any other room in the house in terms of the attention that went into its decoration. So from the beginning, this photograph was never meant to be an indicative documentation of my parents’ home or living situation, nor really of my parents themselves. As a result, this photograph portrays a sort of fiction, a brainchild of mine rather than an accurate depiction of anything at all.
And, in my opinion, what starts in fiction should end in fiction; that is, if I’m photographing my ‘rents in a room that doesn’t at all represent them, then I ought to go all out and embrace the fictitious environment I’ve created. So I had my parents bring along their wine glasses, filled with red wine, and, quite coincidentally, they were both wearing red shirts, which I hadn’t planned at all. And the room was very warm-toned and biased towards reddish colours at was, so colour-wise, it really worked out nicely. Then, whilst photographing them, I just let them sort of naturally act, not communicating very much with them, telling them just to ‘act as they normally would,’ which, with any subject being told that, it is instinctive — but usually unbeknownst to the subject that he/she is doing it — to act anything but normal. ‘Twas indeed the case with my ‘rents. They grew awkward, they grew a touch uncomfortable, unsure of what exactly to do. And so as I was snapping away, for a few moments, coincidentally cocked their heads in the same direction and ‘click,’ I caught on ‘film’ (I was shooting digi) what I had not expected at all from the outset: total congruence in many respects, if an odd sort of congruence. The resulting photo depicts what appears to be two artistocratic-esque middle-agers, both wearing red shirts, both drinking red wine, both sitting in a reddish room, and both with their heads canted in the same direction. Congruence? Harmony? Perhaps. But more than anything, pure fiction. My parents are nothing like that, and that room is nothing like the rest of the house.
Perhaps you’re wondering about the technical details of the photo, namely with respect to how it was lit. I used a total of three hotshoe strobes, or speedlights, or whatever you care to call them. Two were positioned directly across from and in front of my parents, one strobe in front of each parent. I gaff-taped off the flash heads so that the light from the strobes could only come through roughly a 1cm wide vertical slit on each strobe. This decreases the area through which the light from the strobes can exit, effectively creating a smaller light source akin to the size found on P&S cams and in turn creates a more contrasty, more ‘noir-ish’ look that increases the ‘drama quotient’ of any photograph by a sizeable margin. The strobes were positioned maybe a metre away from each parent at a low angle near their feet, facing upwards towards them. Because the strobes were so close to my beloved parental subjects, I had to get up very close, shooting at the widest end of my 16-35mm zoom just to keep the strobes out of the frame.
The third strobe was placed behind my ‘rents in the back corner of the room. The stand is not really that easily visible in the photograph, but it is indeed contained within the frame. The purpose of this flash was to provide rim/hair-lighting for the back of my parents’ heads and to help them ‘pop’ away from the background. But, probably more importantly, that light served to illuminate most of the room, acting as somewhat of a fill light. All of the light in this photo is from strobes — the ambient lighting was way too dim and subsequently wasn’t even caught on the exposure because of the small apertures used to expose for the strobes set at a much higher intensity than the ambient lighting.
It’s hard to say to what extent my lighting choices in this photograph contribute to the mood of the photograph, but I would venture to say that had I used softer lighting — such as softboxes or brollies — the mood would have no doubt been less dramatic and probably a good deal less interesting. In fact, the dark, sort of ‘aristocratic’ mood and the similarity to natural incandescent lighting would likely have been very much lost and the photo would have seemed quite contrived and inauthentic-feeling…but that’s just a guess.
Los Angeles-based photographer Jeff Sheng’s latest project, ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ which recently debuted at the Kaycee Olsen Gallery in LA, is a rather poignant emotional (and implicitly political) visual commentary on the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy currently enforced upon gay and lesbian individuals enlisted in the American military. Delving into the political for a moment, I strongly believe that the simple fact that such a project was undertaken at all in the photographic community is nothing short of superb. I feel that sometimes there’s a propensity in documentary and fine art photography (and all other photography with a political or activist motivation in mind) to target broader topics such as ‘conflict in the Congo’ (I’m looking at you, Richard Mosse) rather than to, say, target more specific topics, like something as specific as a governmental policy, as does Sheng’s work. So I applaud him for providing us with an excellent visual adjunct to other activist efforts currently in place attempting to combat this policy.
© Jeff Sheng
From a photographic perspective — technical and otherwise — all in all, I think the body of work is quite good. I think Sheng did a good job of portraying the various emotional repercussions of the policy whilst at the same time refraining from revealing the soldiers’ identities by not exposing their faces — which could have resulted in a dismissal from service. Of course the masking of the faces — working in tandem with the contrasty, moody lighting — functions on an allegorical level as well, implying that they have to hide away their true feelings, their true ‘selves,’ their true identities, etc. All in all, excellent work — certainly worth a gander.
