Page 68 - Lighting the Unlightable Volume 1 #1

she had worn when we worked in a cemetery a decade

ago. I also realized, as I went back through the images
from our previous sessions, I had never photographed
Anna using strobes. We didn’t own any at the time.

In fact, all the images had been created using only
ambient light. Looking at the images, I had a rough

idea how the light from our strobes would interact
with Anna, but I really couldn’t be sure until I started
working.

I also know that no human body reflects, refracts, and

absorbs light the same way another body does, and,
even across a single human body, there can be a sig-

nificant variance. In my previous sessions with Anna,
that was largely a moot point, in part because my un-
derstanding of light was still relatively unsophisticat-

ed, and in part because there was nothing I could do to
“fix” the situation, even if I saw the problem. Review-

ing the images of Anna from our first shoot together
at Belmont, all the inadequacies of my understanding
of light at that time were obvious. That wasn’t going

to happen again, not with all I had learned, and all the
gear I had at my disposal.

Lets look at the basics.

When: Sunday, May 28, just three weeks shy of the
Summer Solstice.

Where: Belmont Estate, Reidsville, NC
Time: After 1:00 PM

Direction: The front of the house faces South. The sun

would be moving from east to west as the afternoon
went on.

Angle of the Sun: Rather high, so no direct light

through the front windows. However, from past expe-
rience, I knew that a significant amount of light would
be reflected from the veranda into the room.

Volume of Light: It would be highly inconsistent. The
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