Today, I want to share a little exercice that I do with my photography students at Collège Marsan.
Obligatory preface: I still mainly work as a photographer and am available for commissions. Just mentioning this because I’ve had a few people think that I’ve stopped doing photography and only teach now—not the case! I only teach a day every week or two. Let’s work together 🥳.
In my introductory portrait class, one of the first exercices I have my students do is to create a one-light portrait. There’s nothing groundbreaking at all about one-light portraits. Most of my headshots have just one light source.
But it’s an important exercise when we’re trying to learn our equipment and explore the potential of a kit with limited gear. At the photography school, there’s a ton of equipment, but you don’t graduate from photography school with easy access to that much equipment.
So I wanted them to see what was possible with just a single light source. Depending on how we shape and bend light, and where we place it, there’s a multitude of moods and textures we can create. They had an hour to create two one-light portraits and explore the possibilities of one flash.
As a teacher, it would be easy to just explain to them that there’s a world of possibilities, but as a fun challenge to myself, I try to walk the walk and demonstrate it too using the students themselves as my subjects.
Another valuable part of this exercise is that they get to feel what it’s like to being photographed. Not enough photographers spend time in front of the camera. You gain quite a lot of insights that you can then translate when you give out direction to your subjects. What is too much or too little direction? What makes things feel awkward? What is helpful to hear as a subject?
So I grabbed them one by one and created quick 5-ish minute portraits. Here are my results!
Didn’t realize how the series leaned pretty moody overall until after I saw all students. This last one is probably my favourite of the bunch, just because it’s slightly more technically complex than the rest. If you know how it’s done, then you know that I’ve cheated, because although it is a single light source, it’s also technically using the ambient light in the room (to create the blurred ghosting). A slow shutter speed, with a rear-synced flash that freezes the movement at the last second.
Thanks for reading!