Page 60 - Lighting the Un-lightable 2015

light created by the bulb behind it. The same technology is still used today to

allow a lighthouse to cast a long, tight, beam of light a great distance. By design,

Fresnel technology does two things: It magnifies the light emitted by a bulb and

it keeps the beam of light from diffusing as rapidly as it would otherwise.

The downside? Well, if you look at Hurrell's photos closely, you will see that some

areas, usually behind the subject, are "blown out" - lit far past what the film he

used could accommodate. In terms of our lighting methodology, the intensity

of the Fresnel lights pushed black and white so far away that even film couldn't

capture the entire dynamic range of light. On top of that, Fresnel technology

was intended for use with continuous or constant light. Not strobes. Except we

only own strobes.

To the best of my knowledge no one had ever successfully used Fresnel tech-

nology with strobes. Many photographs had tried to duplicate Hurrell's style

using strobes but no one - as far as I knew - had managed to deliver the quality

I wanted. I didn't want burned out whites. I didn't want impenetrable black

shadows that were stripped of detail. I wanted technically accurate images that

were true to Hurrell's style.

Using Fresnel lights isn't at all like using strobes. That was clear both from what

I could see in Hurrell's work and what I read. More "contrasty" and harsh, work-

ing with Fresnel lights wasn't as easy as substituting them for strobes. Fresnel

lights create dramatic, sharp, shadows. That's the good news.

The bad news is that they also "push" black and white farther apart. As we have

discussed many times in this series, the farther apart black and white are, the

more difficult it is for a digital camera to render detail, color, texture, and con-

trast effectively. Images look "flat." Colors appear muted. Detail and texture can

appear soft. If you aren't working in RAW, or if you are using a high ISO, then

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