![]() Typically you can solve this by moving your subject away from your background. Why is this important for these images (and light in general)? Because I wanted to highlight my subject (the incredibly talented Jill) without using light in the background. That direct stream is what a grid does to your flash. Turn the nozzle the other way, and the water spray turns into a direct stream. Turn the nozzle one way, and the water spray covers a wide range. Think of a grid like a spray nozzle of a hose. Unlike shooting with an umbrella where the rim light goes EVERYWHERE, grids are used on bare flashes and in conjunction with other rim light modifiers to help control where the rim light goes. Grids are excellent for flashes because they help narrow the spread of single light. The key to using rim lighting with these images was rim light control, which meant grids. The specifications of these tools make zero difference in how these images were created. Side note: I’m redacting which flashes, camera, and lenses I use because I want you to focus on the light modifiers – not specs or my brands of choice. (Gear Acquisition Syndrome), here are the tools I used to knock out these images: I gave myself two personal constraints: don’t light the background separately (this would be cheating), and don’t use color. I also didn’t want to completely lose the detail in the body of my subject, but it needed to be subtle so it didn’t distract from the light edges. My goal for these images was to specifically light the outer profile and curves of the body. Mike Glatzer Photography How I Made Killer Studio Portraits Using Rim Lighting Unfortunately, I’m a color fiend, and I gotta see what the tones are doing, so it doesn’t always work for me. Honestly, I’d argue you could shoot this way for all your work to get good at making compelling compositions and simplifying your backgrounds. It helps remove the difficultly of pre-visualizing your shot without color. By putting your in-camera color profile to monochromatic/ black and white with rim light, you can see how your subject looks relative to your background and work with intent in real-time. If you’re shooting JPEG, you’ve cut down a step in your editing workflow. If you’re shooting RAW, this is great because you’ll still have the color option when you import your images into Lightroom, Capture One, or your preferred RAW processor. The most significant aid for me in setting up and shooting black and white images is to change the color profile in my camera to monochrome or black and white. Again, since we don’t have color to help us, we have to rely on composition, posing, and the rim light on the subject relative to the background. Your subject needs to POP from the background. Create Great ContrastĪs for being more extreme – the name of the game is contrast. So any extra details or features within a shot need to be subtle or subdued to reduce that possible distracting aspect. Without color to help drive the viewer’s attention to the subject of a shot, we have to simplify the rest of the shot. Distractions or busy backgrounds will ruin these images by making your audience have epic “Squirrel!” moments. Composition and posing need to be simple and clean. With black and white photography, the little details matter. I find, when shooting in black and white with a rim light, that you have to be simultaneously subtle and more extreme. I don’t know why maybe because it was the original format of film and photography, or maybe there’s some kind of nostalgia implied when color is stripped from the medium. There’s something classic and timeless about black and white photography. Ready to learn how I did it? Getting Started: Rim Lighting in Black & White The twist: doing it in black and white so I couldn’t rely on color as a separator. I wanted to use off-camera flash to light the edges of a subject and visually cut them out from the background. How to Make Powerful B&W Portraits with Rim Light Mike Glatzer’s step-by-step guide to rim lighting will teach you to use off-camera flash to make high-contrast studio portraits in black and white!
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