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Lighting Masterclass - Stuart Wood on Lighting - part 2 of 1 2

by Stuart Wood Published 01/12/2013

Used throughout the history of art, warm and cold colour can be used effectively to separate areas of the picture creating an almost 3-D effect upon a purely 2-D image.

The hand-held lamp was off at all times and the glow was added later in Photoshop. To render how the hand holding the lamp would NOT be lit by the 'warm glow' light (which it wouldn't be if he is holding the lamp, but in reality it was being lit by the third light), I shot a few images without the 3rd 'warm glow' light on and simply replaced this part of the hand and lamp later in post production.

Once we were happy with the studio shoot, I processed the images and picked the best, which I then printed on A4 paper as a reference for the following day when shooting the last element, which was our lovely old big red GR postbox! This was perfectly positioned, well off the pavement and roadside as part of my local post office and my friendly postmaster Don had even weeded around the bottom of it for me too!

So, late on a cold, November, Sunday afternoon, a certain individual brought great interest and surprise to the relaxing Derby suburb, by photographing the local postbox!

One chap was so curious that he simply had to come up to me and ask if the Post Office had been broken into, to which I swiftly reassured him that it was not a crime scene, but I was merely taking a picture of the postbox!

For some reason, he didn't hang around much after that!

I prepared my angle to the postbox to match perfectly to our children posting the letters, then measured exactly the same height and distance from the subject as the day before. Using the same lens and aperture, I set up my Elinchrom Ranger with the same small soft box and warm gel and carefully and deliberately placed the specular highlights from my light in the top of the postbox, that would be reflected from the hand held lamp had it been placed there. Again, I moved the light to the top and close to the postbox so that our 'circle' of 'warm glow' matched up perfectly with the studio shoot. The only difference this time was that the fill-light on the postbox was daylight only, hence the reason to shoot it late afternoon when the fading daylight renders cold. As a control, I bracketed the strength of the daylight both lighter and darker, with the shutter speed while leaving the aperture alone, kept the flash exactly the same.

Then it was back to Photoshop to put the postbox into the image. As I had worked so hard on my 'warm glow' circle of light, I managed to complete the 'circle' with ease when I placed the cut out postbox into the image. The snow and blizzard effect was then added by Photoshop to finish off the image.

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1st Published 01/12/2013
last update 09/12/2022 14:59:27

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