I've always wanted my photography education on here to be free, so although there is no paywall to any of my -Technique Tuesdays-, any and all support is greatly appreciated. ❤️
PLUS: Donate any amount and I’ll send you a link to the hi-res print version of my studio lighting book.
||
PLUS: Donate any amount and I’ll send you a link to the hi-res print version of my studio lighting book. ||
90% of our job on set is modifying the light. Pressing the button is the easy bit, but manipulating and controlling the light to get it to go exactly where you want is the real job.
As an aspiring light-whisperer myself, I’ve picked up a few tips over the years, and in recent times, I’ve been fighting with ambient lights more than flash. Sure, ambient light comes in many forms, and my extent of managing daylight involves covering the windows with black velvet and leaving me in a black box. That’s the easy part, now when it comes to controlling the other ambient lights, specifically ‘practicals’ on set, that's a little trickier.
If you’re not aware, ‘practicals’ refers to environmental lights, lights that appear in shot and fit the environment. Lights like table lamps or ceiling lights in a shot are called ‘practicals’ and, as you may imagine, these are typically found on location… but not always.
‘Practicals’ as they’re known are simply light sources that appear in-shot. They can be decorative, but you can also use practicals to illuminate your subject.
In recent years, I've taken to setting up environmental-style shots in a studio, and it’s pretty easy to do. One of the core aspects of an engaging-looking environment shot though, is the practicals, and I do try to bring some into my sets to add a little drama and atmosphere to a shot.
The practical lights can be subtle and in the background, or they can be far more dominant, even significantly lighting the set or the model.
Using Practicals as Keys
Having practicals in the background of a shot can still add a lot of interest and visual depth to a shot, plus, they’re relatively easy to include if they’re not affecting the background and/or model too much. But a lot more care needs to be taken when we want to use practicals to actually illuminate our subject, and even use them as key lights on our subject.
Here we can see the practical light is actually the key light on the model.
It’s tough to argue with the beautiful colour a tungsten bulb can offer too.
I have a few practical lamps that I often take with me on location as they offer a consistent and controllable way to add them in shot, without relying on the luck of the draw when you arrive. The main one I use is a simple IKEA lamp as it’s lightweight, can be broken down and transported very easily and looks generic enough to fit into the background of many shots.
Additionally, if I really want to, I can even use it as my keylight and almost solely illuminate the model with it if I want.
Controlling the Practical
This seems easy enough, right? Place the model beneath the lamp, turn it on, and win. Right? Sadly, not quite as there is one very annoying aspect to these types of lights, and that’s the directionality of their light output.
Ordinarily, many of these ‘standard lamps’, as they’re called, are designed to send light straight up and into the ceiling of your living room or bedroom. This is fine for the most part, as many homes have a white ceiling that isn’t too high, and that lamp light is bounced off the nice white ceiling and falls down with a soft, even light.
This is not ideal when you’re trying to illuminate the model underneath it, though!
The Bulb Splitter
The solution that I found to work best for this issue was to change how the bulb was aligned inside the lampshade. Typically, the bulb sticks straight up, but with this bulb-splitter, I was able to lay the bulb and now, three bulbs, flat. As you can imagine, this now sends light both down and up.
Multiple Benefits
Of course, the core reason I use this bulb-splitter is to lay the bulbs flat and get more light falling down onto the model instead of so much of it being wasted going up. But, there is another huge benefit to this 3-way bulb, and this is, of course, power.
We now have the ability to use three bulbs in the same lamp, and they not only spread the light fairly evenly around the lampshade, but we now also have triple the power to work with. This can be very useful when we’re trying to match the power of tungsten with the power of flash, for example.
Another slightly less obvious benefit that I hadn't anticipated was that with the bulb lying flat and far more prominent in the lampshade, I found the model’s eyes were receiving far more light and subsequently far stronger cathclights, whereas before I might not have seen any at all.
Final Tip
As I mentioned above, with three bulbs now in the lampshade, we have a significantly more powerful light source to work with. I mentioned that this is a great thing when using the lamps alongside flash, as they have a lot of power. Sadly, this extra power from the three bulbs was often too much when I used them alongside LED lights. Rather than removing some bulbs or trying to find bulbs with a lower wattage, I opted for a dimmer switch instead.
These are pretty cheap, and I actually end up using them a lot more than I thought, so I recommend grabbing a couple.
Products Used
No affiliate links or codes here, so take a look for the best results yourself, as there is a wider variety of options now, and some even include more bulb options, individual switches, and more adjustability. I got mine several years ago, but it’s something like this one here.
As always, thank you for reading. Hopefully, you learnt something new today. If you did, be sure to check out the rest of my articles, as with over a decade’s worth of -Technique Tuesdays- to work through, I’m sure you’ll find something else of interest. Plus, sign up to my mailing list to be sure not to miss next weeks article.
I've always wanted my photography education on here to be free, so although there is no paywall to any of my -Technique Tuesdays-, any and all support is greatly appreciated. ❤️
PLUS: Donate any amount and I’ll send you a link to the hi-res print version of my studio lighting book.
||
PLUS: Donate any amount and I’ll send you a link to the hi-res print version of my studio lighting book. ||
JHP Livestreams…
I livestream every other Tuesday night via YouTube and there I answer your questions, critique your shots, take community images into Photoshop to work on them and discuss all manner of lighting tips and techniques. I look forward to seeing you and your work there real soon. Jake Hicks Photography - YouTube