I live in a small urban apartment with my wife, two children, two cats, a goat, and a flock of chickens. Or, at least it feels like that sometimes.
I'd like to set up an area for basic portrait photography, for my family and friends who are willing to let me experiment on them. However, we really do consume every available square inch with living space.
How can I set up a "portrait corner" under these circumstances? The walls are brightly painted in a variety of colors, and decorated nicely, so a backdrop will be required, in addition to light stands and whatever else. My wife puts up with enough, so a key requirement is that whatever solution I have can get out of the way and out of sight quickly. But it also needs to be quick to set up, or else the practical details of life mean that everything will just stay packed away except for rare occasions, which both misses the point and makes things worse because it's not like we've got a lot of storage space either.
Simply throwing up a backdrop hides the background, but I'm looking for more than just hiding the walls. How can I control and shape light within these limitations?
Guenevere, with unwanted shadow to the left, and simple broad lighting — I've got some practicing to do.
Are there pre-made solutions that might help me? (Perhaps gear designed for traveling professionals?) Or are there clever D.I.Y. suggestions I might follow?
Answer
As with most "big boy" hobbies, the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor; similar XAFs exist for other types of relationships) is an elusive thing. At least in the photography realm (unlike, say, the world of the audiophile), the impact on the decor is transient and forgivable. Well, unless you start attaching curtain rods all over the living room, that is. (I have no idea what the heck those other guys were thinking. Ah, yes -- "other guys". And geeks to boot. I think that's the answer.)
Here, your best options for a quick set-up and tear-down (and actual lighting control, etc.) are going to involve what may lie outside of the Acceptable Outlay Parameter (one of the key terms of the WAF equation, along with Persistence in Visual Field, Ugliness Quotient and Wiring Ratio).
Pop-ups (or collapsibles) are your best bet for the "now you see it, now you don't" part of the equation. That can include the background, as well as reflectors. And the key to getting anything like modelling from lighting in a very small space is your new best friend, the black "reflector" panel*. And, as it happens, that is the off-the-shelf professional location solution.
Now, before you start to imagine a world in which every imaginable square inch is occupied by a light stand, understand that many of these pop-up reflectors and backgrounds are available with "feet" -- and that there isn't a whole lot to creating something similar if your panels' maker doesn't happen to offer them. A background panel can often just be leaned against the wall with neither feet nor stand.
These panels come pretty big if you want big (like for the background -- 6'x7' and 7'x8-9' are common enough sizes); but they are also available in a "rather tall but not too terribly wide" (approximately 1m x 2m) size that will take up less storage space. You'll probably find that if you can control the bottom six feet of the space you're in, you can at least get some directionality and dimensionality in your images. (Full-figure pictures are probably not in the cards anyway if the space is really small.) You'll still get more fill than you'd probably like from overhead, but it's better than uncontrolled reflections from too many walls that are in too close. A perfect solution -- except that it's not quite free, and the DIY version (PVC pipe and fabric panels) either takes up too much space (and is difficult to transport) or starts to get a bit fiddly in the set-up/tear-down space because of the number of joints.
If you are sticking to torturing your immediate family, they'll quickly get used to humoring you for short stretches. That means that you can make your subject space really very small, with the lights and reflectors in a lot tighter than you might imagine they ought to be. Really, most people keep the lights and so forth way too far away. The closer your lights, the more rapid the falloff at the subject position, and the more control you gain when making fill decisions and so on. The space may be a bit claustrophobic for some, but, honestly, it's the best thing you can do for your portrait lighting short of renting 400-600 square feet with 16-foot ceilings whenever you get the itch.
When you reduce the space around your sitter (subject), you can move them a little farther away from the background and stand a better chance of effectively flagging off unwanted foreground lighting (and shadows). What light leakage you do have will have had plenty of chance to fall off if you're using black "reflectors" to contain your key and fill lighting.
*Now, when I say "black 'reflector' panel", I actually have a preference for a dead-black collapsible background in tiny spaces. The velour/velvet panels stop light dead in its tracks; the standard black panels still reflect an appreciable amount of light. That reflection is a Good Thing in a more open space, but when coupled with the unavoidable fill from walls and ceiling in a small space, it really isn't enough light deadening for my tastes.
No comments:
Post a Comment