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Lighting Masterclass - Stuart Wood - Aug 15 - part 2 of 1 2 3

by Stuart Wood Published 01/08/2015

I was also told that I now needed to supply him with a small gift, as is the custom and as money was not appropriate, I gave our taxi driver a Christmas card with my children pictured on it and when this was explained to him, his large and generous heart immediately melted and he placed the card in his wallet and returning it all to his breast pocket, he patted the item signifying that it was now all very dear to him.

Now, all this would have been quite a beautiful experience had it not been for my extreme anxiety and acute worry, due to spending SO long gridlocked in both directions travelling out for the location light; we were now into the afternoon in Moscow AND in December and the light was fading swiftly and there was a very real risk of not getting Joanna in Red Square, which would have been unthinkable!

As I was shooting this project for ITV, Radio Times, TV Times and Hello magazine, I had to make sure that I varied my approach to the images throughout my stay, so that each different client would hopefully have their own individual and exclusive pictures in which to publicise the show when it was finally transmitted. So when we finally had access to Joanna after she had done her piece to the film camera, we went about shooting her in Red Square both with the ambient light and reflector and also to give it a different 'feel' and look, we also shot her with the Elinchrom Ranger and soft-box.

It is the latter image that I am using for this issue's main example. To automatically add a little 'depth' to my lit location images, it is not uncommon for me to deliberately underexpose the ambient light by selecting a faster shutter speed after selecting my optimum aperture. For this image and because I wanted to obtain a completely different result to the purely ambient pictures of Joanna in Red Square, I selected a shutter speed that would render the background around two stops under, while obviously the main subject lit by the Ranger would remain unaffected.

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1st Published 01/08/2015
last update 09/12/2022 14:59:28

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