Diagrams...

Learning lighting set-ups can be a nightmare simply because there are dozens of ways to use a flash, and thousands of ways of lighting something. Learning how to operate the kit is easier, in my opinion, if you use it on manual and if your flash allows you to vary the output like most speedlights. Once you've sussed the kit, what are you going to do with it ? For me, its about having an idea for a shot, then working out what kit you need to make it effective rather than a "i've got these lights, now where do I put them ?" approach. An idea i've had for a while was to portray myself as a meglomaniac, a slightly menacing, grumpy so-and-so with an accusing eye. (too many Bond movies as a kid!) I had a pair of heavy glasses that might lend a meglomaniac feel and practised a mad scientist-type frown. I want the portrait to look like i'm bearing down on the viewer through a magnifying glass, and that there's no 'escape' from an 'all-seeing' eye ! I also wanted a threatening, dark sky as a backdrop to further project a sense of world-domination etc etc... I then roughed out a few sketches and started to look at the lighting for it. I decided that it would need some harsh light to give it the menacing bit, but it would need softer but directional light from the front for detail. I'm rubbish at drawing but i've practised thumbnailing for years and can draw a half-tidy diagram. If you're not too great at drawing, you could use a diagram-generator like the one I came across on a website recently. Basically it lets you build your own lighting diagrams from preset graphics and the one above is an example I made. They're called Sylights and you'll need to sign up for it. You can start to create your own diagrams from a comprehensive list of reshapeable and repositional graphics. Its straightforward enough to drop and drag the shapes you want into place, and get your ideas down on paper. You could also try using Take the basic lighting set-up above for my idea. Try to previsualise what you think its going to look like. There are 2 hard flashes fired from behind, and from the front, there's another, moody but softer flash. Can you previsualise what its going to look like yet ? I'm being deliberately vague on the technical details because I want to concentrate on the idea, not the kit. The kit bit comes later. In attempting to predict a lighting set-up for an idea, you have got to have an idea in the first place. Concentrate on the idea and then work out how to go about shooting it. In this case, I needed rim-lighting from behind in the shape of snooted speedlights, and a brollied speedlight from the front, just above the camera. Now, hopefully you got what I was trying to do and formed a mental idea that looked similar to this !