LATENT IMAGE - Spring 2019

Sometimes you just get a crazy idea in your head!
Initially, you think, that's a little mad. Then you
consider the idea a little more, and the more you
think the more you decide to rise to the challenge.
Photographers often say to me during a conversation,
I'm a natural light photographer, and look little
scared as if I'm going to quiz them on the physics of
flash lighting. Some of the braver ones approach
me with the statement... I just don't understand
supplementary lighting. It was the former, as well as
the latter which made me want to show the world,
that with a little thought, you can put light anywhere
you want it, make it look the way you would like it
to, and with minimal kit.
I love a challenge, so set myself the challenge of
using minimal kit to create this picture. Why? I
wanted to show that employing supplementary
lighting to make a picture isn't anything to be scared
of - when you know how and give it a go. I’m a real
fan of the power and recycling speed offered by the
Modus 600RT, these are my speedlights of choice
when I need to go minimal. And to prove that
supplementary lighting needn't be expensive, I only
used two Modus' in this image... Yes, just two
speedlights!
Just to make it even harder on myself, I chose to go
naked, there wasn't a light modifier in sight - my
flash heads were used bare faced. I needed to show
those afraid of flash lighting, that it's not difficult
(honest) and those who think you need to spend on
expensive kit to create pictures like this one, that
you don't. This image could easily have been
captured by two inexpensive speedlights, the ones
we can buy for less than £30 each.
The truth is very simple, light is well…Just light!
Wherever it comes from, no matter the source, it all
acts the same; light only has a few properties:
brightness, colour, contrast and direction. I love
engineering light and bending it to my will, so if I'm
honest, part of the creation of this image was ego
driven, I really wanted to turn night into day, a real,
let there be light moment! The image was shot as a
bit of fun, while the team and I were relaxing in our
villa, after completing a workshop day in Lanzarote.
The light in Lanzarote is far too bright for a small
speed light to be used as a key light, most of the
time, but at night one speedlight can become king.
I placed my first speedlight in the garden outside my
bedroom door so the light would shine back into the
room. This light was set at full power. I wanted to
create a shaft of light beaming through the door so
was careful to allow enough light to also spill onto
the tree outside, making sure the patio area looked
the same as it does in daylight. Pushing the light
through the closed curtain, supported the illusion I
was trying to create.
Now it has to be said that much of the picture lends
itself not to the lighting but the effort the team put
into the styling and the dynamics of the image.
Camera left (and out of shot ) we have Lilly my
make-up-artist, who was instructed to
simultaneously throw the heavy drape in the air and
jump backwards out of shot, as best she could,
throwing a few leaves at the same time. My better
half and assistant, Lesley, was positioned camera
right. Lesley was instructed to jiggle the curtain and
throw leaves from the garden for all she was worth -
it really is always a team effort.
The single flash placed outside the window, would at
best, semi-silhouette our model Pixie, so we needed
to resolve the issue by adding in another speedlight.
I wanted this light to be low contrast, soft, yet
directional and all out of a tiny barefaced speed
light. To achieve this I need to make the light
bigger. The simplest solution would be to turn the
flash away from the subject. So the speedlight was
aimed behind me, at the point where the wall and
the ceiling meet, to bounce the light back at the
model from a non-central direction to add a little