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This image blows me away, which is why I asked David Hobby how he lit it. Be sure to watch our full interview for more of his tips, but this is what he told me about making this image:
That’s a mistake. A lot of my best pictures are mistakes, and I’ll fully own up to it. Not a mistake, just something that wasn’t what I planned.
He’s sitting out playing at a lakeside, this is a setup, an environmental portrait, and I’m floating an umbrella right over him. Just some guy holding light stand and dropping it down, and I’m filling with an Orbis ring flash, which is my– that ring flash and key light combo is really a go-to thing for me. And I’m filling in detail, and I turned the ring flash off that was filling in all the shadow detail down at the bottom, and i just want to see what that top light looks like, so maybe we can move it a little bit before we do our finals, and as it turned out the way I was fixing my problem of legibility in the bottom of the frame was also taking away a lot of interest and drama and contrast from the picture.
So as soon as I turned of my second light, that professional second light that fills in all the shadows, I realized that my picture was really this rougher, more stark top-down umbrella right over his head, just let it fall right across him. But you gotta be willing to say, “That’s kinda better than what i was doing,” and just go with it.
Watch the full Interview with David Hobby, buy books by David Hobby
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