Lighting is one of the most important aspects of photography, whether it’s for stock or not. Mastering light can take a lifetime and though many excellent books have been written on the subject, there really is no substitute for hands-on practice. In this part of my stock-series, I will take a look at the most common types of lighting and what kind of pictures they are good for. This is not an end-all lighting tutorial, but I hope you can find something in these paragraphs to help you build a better stock portfolio, simply by keeping some of this basic advice in mind.
Generally speaking, most good stock images are pretty evenly lit, except images where creative lighting is used to get a specific, dramatic effect. However, for most purposes, try to get a lot of mid-tones in your pictures and watch out for high contrasts. Learn to read the histogram and don’t trust simply using your camera’s display to check your images.
Underexposing your shots is particularly dangerous because dark images have a tendency to also have more noise and pixel discoloration in them. The short explanation for this is, that there is less data in dark parts of digital photos, so when you lighten it later, your post-processing software will have to guess what the dark parts should look like. And thusly, pixel discoloration and noise is born. It is always easier to darken a mid-tone than to brighten a dark spot.
High contrast areas come with the risk of chromatic aberration, also known as purple fringing, which can get your images rejected from iStockphoto very fast. Using good lenses and full-frame cameras can help this, and in some cases you can fix slight fringing afterwards (if you shoot RAW), but with bright light and dark elements mixed together, there is always a risk of the dreaded fringing showing up.
Beware of the Sun
Natural light is the most readily available lightsource. It’s free and there for you all day long. But sunlight is not always your friend, because it tends to be very harsh, creating equally harsh shadows and possibly blown out highlights in your images. Many images that get rejected for poor lighting are suffering from this issue. Staying away from the mid day hours and direct sunlight is a good way to avoid the most common problems. Try instead to shoot in the shade or wait until the lighting is softer, typically in the afternoon.
If you’re out and about, and you just see that one thing, you simply must have in your portfolio, all hope is still not lost. Deep shadows created by sunligt can be softened if you have a bounce. A bounce is basically a shiny surface used to bounce light back at your subject. By bouncing light into the shadowy parts, you can either soften or completely eliminate dark shadows. You can buy good travel-sized bounces with several types of surfaces (silver for cool tones, gold for warmth, white for neutral etc.) for less than $50 and they are really worth every penny. With some of them, you can take off the shiny part and use it as a diffuser, which is your other alternative to dealing with direct sunlight – putting something in front of it. Diffusers are basically thin, white sheets that let some of the light through, softening it along the way to turn down the harshness. Kind of like a softbox or a cloud.
The problem with both of these is that they are somewhat cumbersome to use, if you don’t have someone to hold the bounce/diffuser for you. One way around this problem is to use a tripod and a remote, lining up the shot in the viewfinder and then holding the bounce yourself. A better solution is to have someone assist you, of course.
For landscape photos or pictures with a lot of background, the bounce might not cut it. In these cases, using bracketing might help you. Place your camera on a tripod and shoot three of the same shots with different settings (most cameras have a built in bracketing function), and use the different photos to create a single, balanced image in post-processing. This is a fairly advanced technique that will require a bit of practicing, but you can really get astounding results with it, especially for landscapes, sunsets and similar subjects.
Strobes, hotlights and studio lighting
Most photographers will want to invest in some kind of studio-type setup at some point. Here is another area where it is all too easy to spend a small fortune on equipment you will never need. Keep in mind that you’re shooting microstock, which earns you a little at a time. Don’t spend a lot of money on something that will never make itself back. Another common misconception is that more light is better. For most pictures you will not need five lights set up all over the place. I recommend getting a small setup first that you can expand on later, if you need to. Two strobes or hotlights is a great way to begin, and if you get one of the cheaper kits, you can get everything you need for about $300.
I sometimes get questions about which solution to pick, strobes or hotlights. Each have their advantages and my answer is always: it depends on what you’re shooting. If people is your thing, definitely go for the strobes. Nobody likes posing in front of a couple of hot lamps for hours and you will get a lot of shiny foreheads (or learn make-up), if you use hotlights for shooting models. However, if still life or product shots is your thing, you may want to consider hotlights, as these are easier to pose.
Posing strobes and hotlights is the trickiest part of shooting with studio lighting. The optimal setting for using these lightsrouces is a dark room, where no other lights can interfere with your setup. By shooting fairly high shutterspeeds, you can eliminate ambient light more or less, but it is when posing your modelling lights, the dark studio really comes in handy. Strobes come with built in modelling lights to give you an idea of, how the light will fall when the strobes go off. In most of the cheaper kits however, the modelling light is really weak, to the point where they are almost worthless. Hotlights obviously don’t have this problem, since they are constantly putting out the same light anyway. Again, practicing is the best way forward, no matter what you’re shooting with. Bounces are often effective in combination with studio lighting as well, and you can get a stand to hold it for you.
Speedlights and flashes
Before proceding any further, let me just say this: That built-in flash on your camera? Forget it exists. Don’t use it. Ever. Direct flash is one of the worst types of lighting and an instant killer for stock photos. It creates the same harsh shadows as sunlight does, only not even looking natural, and the flash has a tendency to only light up whatever is directly in front of your camera. You can argue that direct flash can be used as a fill flash in certain situations, but even so, the results are often not good enough for stock use. The way to go, is to invest in a speedlight – a mountable flash-unit that can swivel and turn, to let you use it indirectly. A speedlight will let you bounce light off of walls, ceilings and, well, bounces, giving you much better control and results. If you are a photographer on the move, a speedlight will be one of the best investments you can make.
Now, when you’re bouncing the light off of various surfaces, you will notice that two things come into consideration: Distance to the surface acting as a bounce, and the type of surface it is. A red stucco wall will bounce completely differently than a mirror, just like tall ceilings will suck up all the light, while low ones will bounce a lot of it back. Again, this is something that takes practice, but is a lot of fun to experiment with. You might be surprised at how different surfaces can get you creative results. Speedlights are not cheap, often costing about the same as a cheap strobe kit, and some models are more advanced than others, offering things like linking series of speedlights for complete, studiolike setups. Personally, I have a cheap one and have never once needed any of the advanced features, the more expensive models have to offer.
A note on White Balance
Different types of light, have different color temperatures. Even if you don’t know anything about Kelvin or how light is measured, you might notice that some of your shots have a blue or orange hue, that wasn’t there when you were looking through the viewfinder. That would be your white balance being off. For an image to have correct color tones, you will need to make sure the white balance is right. If you shoot in RAW, you can adjust the balance afterwards and most cameras have a pretty decent auto function, for getting it right in the first place, but don’t rely on this too much. There is a great article about the more technical aspects of this on iStockphoto, including everything you need to make sure white balance never becomes an issue for you.
This post is part 9 in a series about my experiences with stock photography, tips and pointers, meant to offer a little inspiration to those interested in such things. The next installment will be about common mistakes, made by new stock photographers. For a complete and chronological list of articles, check out the Microstock Photographer’s Guide.
