Homecoming shoot and the light meter

Albert Pedrosa
Photo Mania

RECENTLY, I was asked by the Department of Tourism of my hometown to shoot for the upcoming beauty contest that happens annually as part of the activities for the town fiesta. It’s not as extravagant as Miss Cebu, but the feeling of being able to contribute to your hometown makes me proud constituent.

I brought in my team – from makeup artist to stylist – to ensure that we’re going to make beautiful photos for the candidates. I did not expect so much from the candidates and surprisingly, they were even more updated on Asia’s Next Top Model than me. Surely, social networks are responsible for this.

One thing I realized during the shoot is my dependence with my light meter. When shooting with multiple setups, you can easily get lost in figuring out which light source is messing up. This happens midway on your shoot when fatigue starts to kick in.

In one of our setups, we wasted a precious 30 minutes figuring out the problem and it turned out it was the reserve light that happens to be set to slave adding light, where it was not needed. We figured it out by resetting everything and started measuring each and every head.

Although it is easy to assess the result by looking at the preview display, using a light meter ensures how much light is really reflected. In my experience, LCD preview can really be a problem at times especially if you use picture style, which adjusts the jpeg file that is used for LCD display. With all the confusion, the numbers in the light meter will not lie. If there’s light there, then the numbers will show.

When working with light setup, a team of assistants will really give the photographer space to preserve the creative mood. When communicating with your assistant, the most effective way to achieve a certain light setup is to speak in specifics. For example, you can say f8 on the main, f4 on the fill, and f8 for the hair lights.

When you communicate your imagination into figures, it’s easy to understand and execute using a light meter, thus sparing you from additional stress in the set. Your lights man can do all the light testing while you review your objectives and theme for the set.

Working with artificial lights is one essential part of photography. And just like many other parts of photography, mastering it takes a lot of shooting hours. Keep on shooting everyone.

photo mania.sunstar@gmail.com / www.grp.ph