Studio Techniques: One Light Photography Tutorial

Setup Four

In the following shots, you can see the difference from two small flash modifiers. In the first image, I’m using the Rogue Grid but from a greater distance than the previous shot. The nice thing is that with this setup you can place your model in the spotlight. The trick for this kind of shot is to carefully place your model. If you place her too far from the background, the shadow she casts will not look nice; however, placing her close to the background (almost touching it) will give you some shadows right beside her. By changing the angle of the light very slightly and adding some curve to the pose, you can create a very engaging image. 

Do you think it would be cool to have some sort of modeling lights? Well, you do with your small flash. For Canon and Nikon, just press the DOF preview button on your camera body and the strobe will go into modeling light mode (don’t use this too often because it will drain the battery rather quickly). With this modeling light, you can quickly see what the light does and take the photo. I think this is much better than trying to judge it on the small screen on the back of the camera. But the best thing to do is to shoot tethered (which I always try to do) because you can see the results on a real monitor.

For the next image, I used the strobe without any modifier and aimed it downward, in a similar fashion as in Setup Two. 

In the third image, I used the same setup as the previous image, but I added a Rogue FlashBender mounted on the strobe, limiting the light spill on the background. The model is still standing against the background as in the previous images, but as you can see the image is totally different. This is achieved by adding the FlashBender.