Week 17 (Ruven Afanador - Jon Haas)
I kept delaying this picture, waiting on a gray day when the light outside looked like London light (where the image below was made). We actually had some days like that, but I didn’t have my ducks in a row when they came around and I let them slip away. Eventually, I decided I needed to just do it, so I set out to create Overcast Light in the studio.
Andrew Lincoln, by Ruven Afanador.
I follow Ruven Afanador on Instagram. He posted a bunch of pictures from this recent shoot, and this cover image stuck out. What I like about the picture from a lighting standpoint is how much the warm light from camera right helps the image. There is a ton of post-processing happening with the colors: the shadows are toned blue/purple, there’s almost a veil of magenta over the whole thing, and lots of desaturation. All that works in contrast to the warmth. If you saw this image right out of camera, you would probably be disappointed. And I love that.
The best way I know to make overcast light is to place a big diffusion panel/scrim overhead and shoot light through it so that it falls evenly underneath. To eliminate the hot spot that would occur from the bulb you could 1) double scrim, 2) try an umbrella or soft box on the light, 3) use a bunch of lights, or 4) point the light toward a white ceiling and use that as a big bounce. I did #4. I could have used a bigger scrim. Mine is 3′x5′. A 12′x12′ with a couple of lights bouncing off the ceiling would have been ideal.
For the warm light, I put a reflector with grid to camera right. I gelled that strobe with a 1/2 CTO (CTO means color temperature orange, one of the standard color balancing gels used in film and photography production. Full CTO will balance a daylight bulb to tungsten. In this case, the gel was half as strong as a full CTO. This decision to use 1/2 CTO rather than a Full or 1/4 was eye-balled). The side light needed to be 2 stops under the key (overhead)—again, I just eye-balled this ratio. One thing I learned in process of shooting is that posture matters here. By tilting the head to the side, as in the Afanador image, you create a new shadow that the overhead light can’t “see.” That makes the side light more effective and allows for a more subtle touch. What’s ultimately key is balancing the exposures so that both lights convey the same brightness. The contrast, then, is made with color.
Mr. Afanador’s background is completely flat, whereas I got a gradient from top to bottom. I think it makes my picture more interesting (than it would be with even light) since I don’t have the bricks.
One thing I love is that this set up is 2 lights, though it looks like 3-4 (with the background gradient). In most of these lighting set ups, I feel that more lights makes better light. You can make 3 lights looks like 1, but you can’t make 1 light look like 3. Except in the case of creating a cloudy day.
Source: Ruven Afanador for The Rake magazine