Early January I attended The Jerry Ghionis Five Day Workshop in Los Angeles through the Soul Society. I attended this workshop because I wanted to push myself in the areas of lighting and posing. Even though my style is journalistic, having a strong understanding of more traditional posing and lighting techniques will make me a far stronger photographer. Jerry is a true genius and the best of the best in these two areas. I learned so much in 5 days that I was itching to practice right away. So my friend Rose Aura and I set out to practice, practice, practice!
As photographers, we’re often faced with environments and situations that we cannot control. Yet we’re still expected to create something spectacular. So what do we do with a room with very low light, an uninteresting hallway, or the challenge of the bright, hot sun? For this particular shoot we wanted to practice shooting in difficult environments using existing lights. So we purposely looked for the most difficult lighting conditions and tried to work our way out of them by creative placement and posing.
THE DARK RED ROOM:
The Challenge: A red room with low light (see above image).
The Solution: The afternoon sun came in through the French shutters and created an interesting pattern on the red wall. It created beautiful texture. I used the texture for a more interesting portrait (see left image below) and as background texture (right image below).
THE BORING HALLWAY
The Challenge: An uninteresting hallway with low light (see above image on the right).
The Solution: Every situation we’re faced with we have to first find the light. (Ha! I guess this applies to life as much as photography). In this case, the best light came from the bathroom sky windows. So I placed Shelby right next to the bathroom to capture some of that beautiful soft light to enhance the beautiful lines on her face and her figure. I then cropped in to remove clutter. I love how she looks with the red wall in the background. The shadows from French shutters I talked about above continues to work it’s magic here. (see above left and below)
THE ROOM WITH A SINGLE RECESSED LIGHT
The Challenge: A VERY dark living room with a single light.
The Solution: Again, let’s look for the best light source. In this case, it was the single recessed ceiling light. The most important thing is to light the model’s faces. With such low light, we most likely have to compromise the lighting of one person. In this case, I wanted to highlight Shelby’s face over Connor’s. Turning her face up, it became lit while elongating her beautiful neck (see above left).
WHEN THERE’S TOO MUCH SUN
The Challenge: The sun was way too bright and direct.
The Solution: The left image above was set in the hallway next to the beautiful bathroom light like the images we covered earlier. But the image to look at is the above image on the right. In this location the sun was very very hot and direct on the model’s faces. We pulled out a diffuser, and it’s amazing how well it worked to soften the harsh hot sun. Compare results of these 2 images that came from 2 very different lighting environments.
CHASING THE SUN
The Challenge: The light is disappearing. How do we capture the last of it?
The Solution: Get creative and use whatever’s avalable! On the left image above I got on the opposite side of the sun to create gorgeous outlining of the model’s figures. Again, I love to enhance Shelby’s gorgeous neck, so the sun helped me here. I can never resist backlight and this is the perfect time to use it. On the right image I used the building on the left as a giant reflector. This definitely helps to extend the use of whatever light that is available. And last but certainly not least…create gorgeous silhouettes! See the image below.
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The 365 journey started 
The 365 journey started