Waxing Poetic and Lighting Cinematic

Recently I hauled the lights out into the inky darkness of night to fire off some test shots for an upcoming project. The idea behind the shot in question was to pay homage to a very dramatic moment that has been played on the silver screen (in countless films) for decades. But as I was setting up, it occured to me that I had often seen such night scenes over-lit. By this I mean that the darkness of night was often lit by millions of watts of blue-gelled HMI's, and somehow wound up looking like it happened in a football stadium. Not only would something like this be nearly impossible with small monolights - but I was not sure I really wanted to go in that direction after all.
When we go outside in real life, night is DARK. It is, after all, NIGHT. So the question of how to light this project suddenly became one of how to creatively draw attention to the subject - the narrative of the piece - but still keep it looking reality based. After mulling over the main idea for the whole thing, I was struck with a pretty awesome idea as to how to approach it. One that covered all the bases and will still look not only dramatic, but call to mind exactly the cinematic approach the image screams for.
So what is all this about, anyway? What is the shot that I am working on? Stay tuned...... This one should be pretty cool!

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Playing With Dramatic Light

I have this image that keeps recurring in my mind. It involves the cold blue feeling of a dark winter and the glowing orange of a firelight. So far it seems to keep eluding me, although I think this is largely because every attempt I have made to capture this "mood" has been done in a hurry, or in the rain, or some other situation that forced me to run through it rather than walk it out. This shot is one such version. I may need to go back with a slightly different lighting setup and try some more. Perhaps in a different location.

It's Not The Light, Its What You Do With It.

Standard soft-light shot with umbrella Snoot light for that film-noir look T his past weekend I had the opportunity to shoot with a very talented East Coast makeup artist, and an amazing model (!) S ince I knew that I would be working in a relatively small space, and did not want to set up lots of plugged in lights, I used a Vivitar 285-HV speed light and bounce umbrella. Once we got the images we were after, but before we wrapped the shot and struck the set, I dropped a snoot on the light, swiveled it around, and tried my version of a "noir / vintage album cover" look. These are just quick samples of both styles, pretty much as they look straight from the camera. The refined, polished, edited versions will be coming up later - but it is nice to see that even a small and often overlooked "old-school" flash unit can still create pretty impressive light!

The Lighting Tells The Story, and The Story Tells The Lighting

T hose who have studied lighting - especially for theater or motion pictures, know well the mantra that "The lighting tells the story." Simply put: No matter what kind of camera or lens is used, who the actors are, or who wrote the script, it is the light that ultimately creates what we see. That is the cutting edge of the knife. However, the more I think about this, the more I would change it a bit... " The lighting tells the story - and the story tells the lighting. " It is a reciprocal thing. The way something is lit does create emotion, and makes the viewer feel the story through their eyes. We draw conclusions and fill in details based on the way what we see is illuminated. But that moment itself must also dictate the lighting: What quality of light is needed to do the telling? Where would it be coming from? What color is this light? Is it one solid wash, or should it be broken up in mottled shadows? All of these things are going to be determined by wha...

C. M. Franke | Photography

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