alittlenews

Apparently there is a class in journalism school where they teach young reporters to schedule photo assignments at high noon.  I must have missed that class in “J” school but there has to be one, otherwise reporters would know that we should never be shooting in the middle of the day outside.  I don’t seem to get too many jobs at high noon in the winter months when the light angles are ever so much better.  Oh no, that would be too easy.  Instead they schedule at high noon in the summer when the sun is directly overhead and exceedingly bright and contrasty.  Nice!

This was done with a double Lumedyne set up fired through an umbrella and then Photoshop was used to bring up the shadows in the building.

Since I don’t get to give much input on scheduling times I just have to deal with it when I get a job at noon.  Now the best way to handle a high noon assignment is to not come in to work until 1 pm!  Not an option for me most days so there has to be another way.  Basically you are facing a question of contrast and shadows, especially on faces.  Even buildings have a pretty rough appearance in high noon and for the same reasons.  You will have some parts of the building dramatically over lit and some parts in deep shadow making it a bad time of day to shoot even a building.

Front and rear views of my strobe set up for the pastor shot. The clamp is a variable friction arm with a camera platform that is very versatile. I don't think Joe McNally has anything to worry about here!

Fill light is the obvious answer but fill light can be difficult.  Have you ever heard of the Sunny 16 rule?  Old timers probably have.  You could read the rule inside old film boxes or old photography texts.  The idea is to take the ISO of the film you were using and turn that into a fraction then set your aperture to f16 and you would have an accurate exposure on bright, sunny days.  So ISO 200 would be correctly exposed at 1/200th at f16.  This is actually pretty accurate even with digital.  If you are paying attention you can see the problem right away.  Unless you are extremely close to the subject, f16 means a whole lot of strobe power and many small strobes won’t be able to tackle this alone except at very short distances.  If you are using some sort of diffuser then you will have to have even more power.

The best solution is to group a couple of strobes and shoot direct.  If you are really close you can get away with one strobe direct.  I am very fortunate to own a set of Lumedyne strobes that can really kick out some light.  My strobes will do 200ws each as configured and have an upper limit of 800 ws per head in their max set up.  All this is from a battery powered unit.  Heck, I can produce so much light with those babies even Joe McNally, Mr. Unlimited Nikon Speedlight dude, would be quite envious.  Perhaps you will remember him from my post on McNally and Hobby Light Mars.  Yeah, that guy.  For those of you not so fortunate to own a set of Lumedynes or an electrically powered monolight, group a couple of strobes on a light stand and fire away.  If you have two strobes, you can actually shoot through and umbrella.  With only one strobe you will probably be limited to shooting direct.

This is a single Lumedyne fired direct at about ten feet. The strobe is low so it could reach under the man's cap to fill the face.

I have two photos with this post demonstrating both methods.  In the photo of the guy between the two cars I shot direct with a single, unmodified Lumedyne strobe at about ten feet flash to subject distance.  In the photo of the pastor, I ganged two Lumedynes and fired through an umbrella.  Both shots were done at or near f16 in the middle of day on bright, sunny days.  I was shooting at 1/250th for the car dealer shot and about 1/125th for the pastor photo.  I needed the shadow side of the church to show up because the story was about small churches.

I am not pretending that either of these photos is great so don’t sit around scratching your head.  There are times when you are locked into a certain shot like it or not.  I didn’t want to do either of these photos the way they were assigned but that is what was assigned and both were very specific assignments.  I would like to have had some input into the assignment ahead of time but that didn’t happen in either job so I had to just deal with it.  Hey man, we are professionals and we get paid to do this so we have to put in every effort to make it happen and happen well regardless of the assignment.  Not every job you shoot is going to be the best thing you ever did but you have to give every assignment the best effort you have.  Most people don’t get into the paper ever so when someone gets into the newspaper it really is a big deal.  We owe it to the people we photograph to do the very best job possible.  In some cases the photos you shoot will be handed down generationally in the person’s family.  I have some newspaper clippings where my grandfather was awarded for heroism when he saved a man’s life.  It is not a great photo.  Just an award presentation but you see my point.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.