Page 22 - Lighting the Un-lightable Volume 1 #3

The Solution:

X

We positioned our strobes in the area of the room farthest from the windows. We used two Profoto seven
foot octagons. They were placed so that they were nearly pointed directly at each other. Roughly two thirds
of the total surface of the lights overlapped. When the strobes fired, two things would happen: Where the
surface area overlapped, the light emitted would "collide" and "break." The breaking of the light would create
a very soft and diffuse light that would fill the area of the room farthest from the glass walls and under the
table. The area of each strobe that didn't overlap would strike the walls, ceiling and table top and reflect back
into the area where the strobes were. This would "push" the diffuse light into other areas of the room as well.
The "X" in the middle of this image shows where the primary point of intersection for our strobes was. The
net effect was that we "cut" the difference between black and white to under two F-stops - well in line with
the way the human eye saw the room and almost ideal for the camera.

So, why did we position the strobes here and how did we know this would work? Well, to be honest, we
knew what wouldn't work. We knew first hand that every other attempt we made resulted in a reflection
somewhere in the windows. We also knew that "aiming" the strobes directly at each other would produce a
soft, diffuse light that would fill the room without reflecting in the windows. The table top would keep the

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