Working with Unpredictable Lighting on Location

On this short video (by Phottix), award-winning photographer Bobbi Lane takes us with her to an on-location shooting session where not everything goes out exactly as she plans and explains how she deals with lighting issues when the occur.

On this video we join Lane in a beautiful stable shooting a horse and a rider during sundown with several Phottix lights. There are quite a few things that don’t always work as planned such as how the light on your subject will look when combined with natural light at the exact hour of shooting. One way to work around this is of course to be prepared and use artificial lights – another way is also the try this in advance – go to the location at the same time and take some test shots (but lighting will never be exactly the same from day to day in most places).

Animals – like the horse in this case might also be a bit unpredictable – if you are not familiar with how they behave – try to take along someone who does or at least study the animal online beforehand to see how you can make it do what you want during the shoot.

Only recently we saw here a few other videos including “Combining Strobes with Ambient Light at Sunset” by  Jay P. Morgan and if you are more into editing and adding the sunset in post – check out “How to Create a Sunset Effect in Photoshop” by Aaron Nace.

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

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.

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