diCorcia dissection

Marc Jacobs shot by Philip Lorca-diCorcia for W Magazine:

Someone posted this image in a photograph forum I frequent. At first I just posted, I like it, the lighting is so evocative, and clicked post. But last night I realized that was just a cop out art student level critique, and I should go in and explain a bit more in depth and so I did an actual reading of the photo. I'm going to cross post it here.

The turquoise/orange color contrast has always appealed to me, as it's a contrasting color arrangement that doesn't seem to really work with pigments often, but when done with light it's really contemporary and can have a great affect of "volumizing" because of the contrast. The bathroom and closet are orange, the midground of the guy is turquoise, then the girl (is it even a girl? I can't tell at this resolution. It looks like it should be a girl, but the arm is kind of manly) is orange again. This lends a lot of depth to the image by vibrating between the two colors.

The scene itself, kind of a morning after vibe, in an upscale hotel. You can see suitcases in the closet, and the bed style plus photo over the bed says more hotel than bedroom in a house. You can tell it's upscale by the nice photo and fabric print, but the key clue is the closet that is only lit on the bottom where the coats hang, leaving the top part unlit. This also makes me remember that almost every light source is probably an actual flash, no ambient on a production of this scale, so either diCorcia copied it exactly, or had the foresight to engineer this detail.

Every light source is soft except that hitting the man on the bed corner. The fact it's hard, it's rim, and it's blue, gives him a hard, cold and calculated feel, almost remorseless for whatever debauchery he was up to hours previous. You also have the fact that he's dark on a black background, so he would be lost, but the harsh rim light gives silhouette and the hard long shadows on the bed draw your eye to him. You get two strong focal points, the figure in the bed in the bottom right, and him sitting on the edge in the upper left. There are so many compositional elements adding depth to this image.

The whole thing is luxurious, moody, and hints at an entire story. I love it.

alejandro_lighting_dissection

I really loved the newest Lady GaGa music video (what gay man didn't?) but beyond the tight bodies and amazing costumes and dance moves, was some really phenomenal lighting. After the 4th or 5th watch through I started trying to figure out some of the lighting setups.

First scene that intrigued me was this tight framing of her face toward the beginning. The razor sharp shadows tell me it's a tightly controlled spot light, and it's aimed perfectly so it doesn't hit her head. This gives attention and lighting to her face, but lets the crazy head gear lighting show, as well as the background lighting create a framing device. It gives it a very otherworldly feel by using light in the main portion, then shadow framing it, then light again framing that. Most lighting schemes either leave the subject lit and background unlit, or the subject unlit and the background lit. The times when it is lit > unlit > lit, the ratios are much closer, creating volume but not this level of contrast. The other thing to note, is while the goggles leave a jet black shadow, the nose doesn't leave any. This requires very precise positioning, because if the light was moved up or further to the right, you'd get a very black very hard edged nose shadow from it. This probably also means her face is very, *very* heavily powdered to prevent any specular shine on her skin.

The scene I liked the most, however, is the above. Very difficult lighting to pull off on a scene this size with so many subjects. My best guess is a huge softbox, large enough to cover the entire stage area, probably 10x20 meters, and potentially gridded or with barn doors to prevent spill (the floor going quickly to black is what makes me think this). I think it's a large softbox because of how soft the shading is, and how even it is on each person and no matter how they move throughout the space of the scene.

What is very likely is the size of the space being huge to prevent light leakage from illuminating the background. One thing that gives these scenes their signature look, is the soft overhead lighting, on a pure black background. This is most likely a stage in a large hanger or warehouse. By having the background being far away in all directions, you don't get any bounce contaminating the shadows on the subjects, and you don't get any light on the background, allowing it to go to black.

I liked this look so much I decided to try it out myself.

This is my 1.5 meter softlighter directly over head. I have lowish ceilings or I would have put it higher, which would have resulted with similar levels of shading, but less falloff from head down to feet. Because I also have a small room I was working in, the background is actually a black paper background. The setup is similar though, in that it's a soft, overhead source, large enough to cover the subject, but controlled so it doesn't hit the background.

I think again this is a brilliant lighting decision in the original GaGa video, because it's the type of lighting we don't normally get to see. The most often occurring soft lighting is on overcast days, but it then comes from all directions, and backgrounds are also hit, ensuring everything is soft. Sometimes we get soft window lighting in houses with dark interiors, but then that lighting is from the side. It's only in controlled lighting environments that you can get soft overhead lighting, but with dark backgrounds. This gives it a highly elevated distinct look, separating it from the lighting achievable from most music videos without unlimited budgets.

Magazine advert dissection

Time for another dissection. I saw these in a local magazine and loved them. They're from a prominent fashion label, and I assume these are corporately sponsored shots that are disseminated to smaller magazines. What I like is the simplicity. I think if most photographers tried something this simple, it would end up looking far too garish and ugly, whereas here I think it's stunning.

Setup shot:



I am positive it's a single light source. What I'm unsure of is the shape of the light and what kind of modifier was used. I do not think it's barebulb, the shadows are far too soft for that. It could possibly be a large beauty dish, but it's more likely an octobox or softbox, with a grid. The shadows are still quite hard for most shoots, so the light was definitely further away. The grey wall provides just a bit of bounce. You can see it open up the shadows of the guys face. It's possible there is some kind of bounce or reflector at the front of this room, angled so it doesn't add much to the wall (leaving the dark shadows intact) but keeping the clothing from going completely black. I'm unsure of this aspect though.

Great shoot, stunning images. I definitely want to try something like this in the future.

Movie poster lighting dissection

I saw this poster at the movie theatre, and (much to my friend's chagrin) stopped for a few minutes to dissect the lighting. I think it's quite a powerful image. First, it has great composition: the black line of the horizon is on a line of thirds, his head is on an intersection of the line of thirds, and the lighting from the far right corner travels up his leg and creates a leading line right to the face.

This is my attempt at replicating how I think the lighting was done:


Three lights:
Blue light is the bright rim you see on his face. It is quite hot compared to the front fill light, which is why I think there are two lights for his face. One hot one, behind, for the bright rim, and one less hot (bright) for the fill of the face. It looks like they used bare bulbs, with no light modifiers, so show off the texture and specularity of his skin. It would be unflattering for a woman, but for a weathered demon-man, harsh lighting works well.
The white light is the fill light on the front. You can tell that it's also angled off to the left because of how heavy the shadow from his pecs are.
The red light is kind of a combo of the left two. It's providing rim light, but also a slight bit of fill (on his gun hand, for instance). It needs to be less bright so that it doesn't compete with the main lighting on the important areas (his face and rock hand).

This is a great look, and one I'd like to try to replicate sometime. It seems to use just 3 lights, all bare (though the right light might have some slight modifier on it) which could be emulated with 3 small strobes. Whenever you see a lighting setup you enjoy, try to dissect it.