photo - Ken Gilbert

how * lighting
Fright
Light
To tell a story, light your scene like a cinematographer
Several yearS back, Harold Lee
Miller, an advertising photographer
from Indianapolis, started
a personal project—a series of
staged photos that explored the
quirkier aspects of suburban
existence. The series, “Modern
Living,” told a story about a fictional
family and its complicated
relationship with television. (See
it at www.haroldleemiller.com.)
Straight location shots of his
props and cast, lit mostly by flat,
44 PoPular PhotograPhy january 2010
ambient light could never have
created the drama, dimension, and
narrative drive that the pictures
required. For that, Miller chose to
light his scenes almost as if they
were movie sets.
Ironically, to help suggest the
darkly complex relationship
between family members, Miller
employed a battery of very bright
Speedotron and Dynalite strobes.
For the image above, which
depicts the climax of a family
Harold Lee
Miller used
a total of
five studio
and location
lights to
bring his
sinister
tableau
to life.
www.storemags.com & www.fantamag.com
feud involving that TV, Miller took
about an hour to set up his lights
with the help of two assistants.
“The hard part,” he says, “was finetuning
the power and position of
each light to draw proper attention
to the models and props.”
Some of the other visual and
narrative challenges that he overcame
by lighting like a cinematographer
included:
Putting a glow in the sky.
By balancing the strength of his
lights to that of the sky beyond the