How To Balance Flash With Fairy Lights For Portrait Photography

On this video tutorial photographer Gavin Hoey takes a look at an interesting studio shoot where flash light is combined with the very weak fairy light on the head of a model.

Coming up with the right combination of light for this shoot was not simple. It takes quite a few tries to get the dim fairy lights look good and even than you still need to make the proper exposure with the rest of the image. Another big challenge – with the lights used a very slow shutter speed was required – about 1/20 of a second or even lower – this is a very hard on the model which can’t move. Ultimately the images were not 100% sharp – there might have been other ways of countering this but Hoery choose to work on the image in Photoshop and make it more of a soft glow type image.

We have looked at different aspects of shooting with a speedlight in a studio including “Building up to Multiple Flash Units” with photographer Ben Long, “One Light Studio Portraits” with Tony Corbell, “Dramatic Portrait Lighting” with Joe McNally and “Using Reflectors” with Hoey himself.

You can check out many more helpful photography tips on our Photography tips section here on LensVid.

Iddo Genuth

Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.