Saturday night, around sunset time, I felt the itch to play with some strobes. I quickly grabbed my gear and my model for the night and set off to the nearby university. Has lots of big old buildings, and for some reasons, I felt like shooting brick walls (instead of the usual running against them). Also, I was going for something more experimental, stuff you don’t do to somebody who has to be looking fabulous on the picture. So instead of the usual flattering, soft light, I did the opposite: Cardboard-snooted hard light.

I started with two strobes: Main light gelled with CTO on camera right, another light with CTB fired against the background. The setup took me about 2 minutes, and another 3 or 4 shots to get the balancing right. I decided to use just a teeny bit of that quickly dropping ambient light, so I dragged the shutter just a little. I actually had to power down the strobe on the right to 1/32, the background strobe ended up around 1/8th. When shooting with hard light, there are a few things you need to consider. One thing is to have a model that can take the hard light. Honestly, it’s just not a flattering light. Luckily, to quote Joe McNally, there are some people that still look great when you throw a car headlight at them. The other thing is to have them look into the light source: Easy-peasy trick to erase unwanted nose shadows.

As the sun was completely gone, I wanted to finish with something simple. My camera had a hard time focusing, so I set the focus on manual. For this shot, I just shot through a white brolly and used some of the reflection on the steel wall as a little separating light (look on her hair to see what I mean).

Finally, to achieve that kinda edgy look I was going for, I cross-processed some of the pictures. The important thing for me is to know how to get the lighting right (know the rules) and still do all the mistakes – intentionally. Joe McNally says, to make something look interesting – don’t light all of it. And I guess, he’s right. Doesn’t have to be all bright and shiny. Histogram? Not today, my friend!