Interesting article on "The quality of light"

Garry Edwards

Garry Edwards

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I think that he makes some valid points. I don't agree with everything he says, and especially not with his argument about correcting colour temperature problems (and especially where the problem is caused by poor CRI) and he also seems to think that all softboxes of a given size are equal - but still well worth a read IMO
 
Garry Edwards said:
Here

I think that he makes some valid points. I don't agree with everything he says, and especially not with his argument about correcting colour temperature problems (and especially where the problem is caused by poor CRI) and he also seems to think that all softboxes of a given size are equal - but still well worth a read IMO
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Good article :) I agree with pretty much all of it, and there is so much bullcrap talked about lighting. Love that quote from Peter Hurley - he's a very good photographer and master of marketing. (By marketing, I mean lies!) But there are a few things in the link that have been skated over, completely missed actually.

The size (and distance) of the light source has most effect on the quality of the light (eg softness of shadows) but that ignores the effect of the environment, ie the studio space. If you take say a 100cm softbox, white umbrella and shoot-through umbrella outside at night and take a portrait, it would be very hard to tell them apart and even harder to say which was which (with catchlights in the eyes blanked out) though the exposures would be different. A silver umbrella would be different, with harder shadows, because of the stronger direct light component coming from the centre.

But take those modifiers into the studio, and depending on the room size, colour of walls and ceiling etc, the results would be different - simply down to spill. The shoot-through would be softest, as it spreads light around 180 degrees from the front, and 50% gets bounced out of the back and around the room too. The white umbrella would also be softer, again due to more spill than the softbox. And some softboxes spill more than others, mainly depending on their depth.

Another simple example - take a portrait in a normal domestic room with white ceiling. Do one with the subject sitting, then again with them standing and the softbox raised accordingly. With the standing shot, the overall exposure will go up slightly (light closer to ceiling) and there will be more light on the hair plus slightly softer shadows under eyes/nose/chin. It will look quite different, yet the only thing that has changed is the position of the light and subject in relation to the environment.

Grids also change the softness of the light too, when used close - basically making it harder. You only have to stand in front of one to see that - say a gridded 100cm softbox at about 1m. The light from the centre goes straight to the subject, but the gird increasingly cuts out light towards the edges. Light from the corners may be blocked completely with a deep grid at close distance.

I like the author's basic stance though - I like to deal with facts and physics for good understanding. And with that knowledge, we can actually produce magic :)
 
Great article, with some omissions and generalisations already mentioned by Hoppy and Gary. I like Peter Hurley's work and I use the way he lights his corp head shots, but of course I can do it with my Lencarta heads and some strip boxes - and have sharper images from short duration flash. I'm not a fan of his aggressive marketing of his little club though.

Like a lot of photography luminaries/gurus, Hurley is no engineer. I've learned how to get real expression from my subjects from him. People do tend to assume that a successful photographer who has a talent for some aspect of photography is also an expert on the physics and maths. Dave Black's explanation of how your shutter works and why tail sync works is priceless, but he's a great photographer. This is where all the myth and legend about, not only light, but other aspects of photography tend to come from. There are of course artists like David LaChapelle - who freely admits he has no clue how any of it works: in fact has a slight disdain for anything technical. Good job he has a large crew that does :)
 
Hurley gets a lot of flack on places like this, but it doesn't matter what we think, clients love him and appear to pay him lots of money. He gets great results, for his market, and that's really the point. He seems to be a very charismatic guy, and ex-model himself, and full of all the right banter. He gets the best out of his subjects, and that's the true skill of a portrait photographer. The technical stuff should be taken as read.

Though there's one thing I do like about his Kinos - they're obviously very bright, and this closes the pupils of his subjects to really show the colour of their eyes. You don't get that with flash, just great big black pupils, though I've found you can get part of the way there is the light is close and the modelling lamp on full. Over the years, flash manufacturers have managed to persuade us that big, dark pupils associated with low (romantic?) light are 'alluring'. I think that's rubbish TBH.

Edit: check any of his headshots https://peterhurley.com/photography/leading-ladies
 
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I agree: more iris looks better than a big black pupil. Hurley's banter and engagement skills definitely work: it's a amazing what you can say to people from the other side of the camera to get a real reaction from them. I also learnt to shoot head shots from a tripod - with enough dof, and the client on a stool so they don't move too much, you can then come out from behind the viewfinder and engage with them more - and just keep clicking as the expressions roll....
 
I thought it "ok." I do like the idea of "demystifying lighting," but I don't think he did a great job of it.
I completely disagree with his explanation of grids. His explanation of bounce vs shoot thru seems off to me (it has more to do with the room/space IMO). And I do think he was a little shallow on color balance (i.e. incomplete light sources).

I also hate the catchlight Hurley gets with those Kino's set up that way... and some of his images with really tiny pupils look very odd to me (i.e. the first in the link). But he's making the big money and I'm not, so what do I know?
 
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