The Art of Projection Workshop - Online

For many of us, creating a great image is about capturing our viewers attention as getting somebody to actually stop and look at your photo is always the first step to a successful shot. But for me, the act of catching the viewers attention is getting harder and harder as many of us slowly become immune to the allure of filters, overlays and the fleeting digital effects that bombard us from the mainstream media outlets every day. As a result of this growing immunity towards the allure of digital effects, I think we are slowly seeing a resurgence in the more traditional image making techniques, and in this new workshop I will be exploring one of the most powerful, versatile and seemingly limitless but bizarrely under-utilised potential of projection.

At its most basic, lighting in photography is simply about illuminating a subject or scene with one or more white lights. For those willing to get a little creative with it, we may even add a few coloured lights to the mix too, but now imagine what the next level of lighting might look like…

Imagine if your light could shine whatever colour, shape or even image you could imagine. How creative and visually engaging do you think your photographs could look then? Welcome to my new lighting workshop, The Art of Projection.

What We’ll be Learning in this New Lighting Workshop

What is the best projector to get for your photography - Thankfully, you’ll be pleased to hear that you don’t have to spend a small fortune to get a decent projector that will serve you well for many years to come. I own a couple of excellent projectors now and similar ones can be picked up second-hand online for less than £150. Many other photographic modifiers cost far more than that already so a projector is certainly a worthy investment if you don’t currently have one.

Using a projector in your fashion and portrait shots - How to balance the light of a projector with the other lights that you may already have. Lights like your speedlights or studio strobes.

4 new and very unique projector lighting techniques - In this new workshop I will be teaching you a variety of very different projector techniques that offer a certain look and feel depending on the type of shot you’re after. These can then be extensively adapted as the projector offers you seemingly limitless potential for varying looks.

Avoiding 5 common pitfalls when using projectors in your photography - I’ve been using projectors in my work on and off for many years and during that time I’ve observed some major pitfalls that most photographers fall into when using a projector in their shots. I’ll go over the top 5 image ruiners and explain how to easily avoid them.

Working with and placing your projector - One area in which I have seen so many projector shots fail in the past has been with the application and placement of the projector. Failing to set your projector properly can easily make, or break an image.

Discussing any other essential tools for a projector shoot - Although getting a decent projector is vital, there are also several other inexpensive tools that I can recommend to greatly improve your projector shots.

-As with all of my online workshops, all the information and notes taught during this course are provided via an extensive PDF.

Lighting Setups Taught

During this workshop I’ll cover the core setups that I believe give you the best foundational knowledge and overview of how to use your projector in conjunction with your current photographic lighting. From here you can mix and max this knowledge to create any number of original lighting scenarios.

Setup 1: Window Light

To begin with, we’ll look at a technique that allows us to project any scene we want between the subject and our camera. This technique is unique in that it allows a forced sense of depth to be introduced into our scene. Ordinarily, this added dimension might appear behind our subject, but by intersecting our image with this element we are able to bed the subject within any environment we want thereby making the subject appear outside or indeed anywhere else but a small studio.

With this technique we will explore a variety of looks and this will include multiple scenes as well as how to introduce supplemental lighting to the scene too.

Setup 2: Projected Shadows

This next setup is one of the most diverse yet simple setups I have experimented with in years. With this technique we will bathe our entire scene, including our subject, in any given image. From here we will explore various lighting setups to augment this scene, including separating our subject from the background, using gels for creative effect and more. As I said at the start, this is by far and away one of the most creative setups I have ever worked with and with the addition of a projector, its scope to create highly individual and unique images is seemingly limitless!

As we explore this particular technique, I’ll explain its simplest form via a single light, then we can move into learning about it with the addition of multiple lights to really make this setup standout and look more polished and commercial.

Setup 3: Environmental Projection

But what if you don’t want your projected image to have any effect whatsoever on your subject? In this setup we will look at taking control of the projector to focus on the scene behind your subject. By gaining a clear separation from your subject, your projected image can enable you to place your subject anywhere you want. This technique can be used to place your subject in a cafe or restaurant scene or it can be used to add more design elements like graphics and any number of coloured lights that will also visually interact with the subject too.

For this technique we will initially explore and shoot some environmental sets where we will learn how to light and situate the model in a location scene. After that we will switch it up and move on to learn a more graphical and colourful scene as well.

Setup 4: Creativity with Colour

To round out the session we will learn a very playful, but extremely eye-catching setup. With this last technique we will unleash our creative sides by experimenting with colours and shapes to silhouette our model against a vibrant and extremely dynamic background.

With this final setup we will get the opportunity to experiment and play with multiple backgrounds, colour combinations and looks.

Included with this lighting workshop…

• 30+ page PDF of workshop notes

• Studio lighting kit list including instructions on DIY modifiers

• All 3D lighting diagrams for lighting setups

• 18 Lightroom Presets specifically for the lighting setups taught in this workshop