photographic lighting tips
Chris © Tim Pannell Photography
Would you like to be able to shoot beautiful portraits of your kids instead of going to some schmaltzy cookie cutter photo joint in the mall? So many people settle for these kind of “one size fits all” portraits because they don’t think they can afford to go to a real portrait photographer’s studio.
Assuming you already have a decent digital SLR camera, you could buy some lighting equipment for the same price or less than you’d spend having a legitimate portrait photographer do the work for you.
There are quite a few common misconceptions about photography and equipment and the kind of lighting power someone might need to do simple portraits.
I do use pretty expensive lighting for all of my commercial work, but for simple portraits I have to dial my strobes to their absolute lowest output and many times that’s still too much light for my needs and I end up diffusing the light source another 1 – 2 stops.
This image of my friends’ son was shot in my living room 
using one main light and 2 accent lights or “kicker lights”.
You can produce this kind of lighting setup easily against a paper background, or even a wall in your home.
I shot it a f 2 @ 1/200th of a second with an 85 mm f1.4 lens on a Canon Mark II body. I exposed for the diffused highlights on Chris’ face and then adjusted my “kicker lights” until I got the highlights the way I wanted them.
I frequently shoot wide open or close to it because I like the ethereal quality it gives the overall image. It’s a great illustration of the concept that not everything in an image has to be or should necessarily be tack sharp.
This is very similar to how the human eye works as well. Not everything you look at is sharp. A relatively small area in your field of vision is actually sharp and then everything else falls off rather quickly into being out of focus.
There are quite a few inexpensive lighting setups out on the market that have more than enough power to produce images like this. Do your research before you buy any of them, make sure they have good warrantees and that the company has been around more than a couple of months.
The great thing about digital is that once you have the camera and lenses, it costs you nothing to shoot and experiment. With film you could spend thousands and thousands of dollars playing around with lighting setups until you found something that you really liked.
The creative possibilities that we now have at our fingertips because of digital cameras and photoshop are endless. One word of caution though……don’t use photoshop as a crutch.
It’s still just as important today as it was decades ago to become a master at lighting and exposure control even though it’s easy to “fix” things in post.
Sky & Sammi © Tim Pannell Photography
I’m amazed at the number of my amateur photography friends that assume that a good shot is one where everything in the image is tack sharp.
There is a time and a place for just about any kind of photography, but most amateur photographers that practice the art of maximizing depth of field do nothing but create very cluttered images with no real subject to look at.
The beauty of using a shallow depth of field is that it enables you to direct your viewers attention right where you want it. In this image, you look immediately at the little boy’s eyes.
There are however, some drawbacks to this approach.
The main problem for most amateurs is knowing what to focus on. I will almost always focus on my primary subject’s eyes. When the eyes in an image are tack sharp the rest of the image no matter how dramatic the focal fall off is will look just fine.
This is an image I shot 12 years ago of my 4 year old son at the time and our dalmation – Sammi. I had been looking at some old photo books by the likes of Stieglitz and Steichen and wanted to play around with the softness evident in so many of their images.
I picked up a Fuji GX-680 camera, which is an absolute pig of a camera, but I love the images it can capture. You have all the capabilities of a view camera with the conveniences of a medium format camera.
It is cumbersome to say the least for me to use, since I detest shooting with a tripod and will avoid it at any and almost all costs.
For this shot I just wanted to capture my son’s love for his dog and the fun he used to have hopping in the tub with her whenever she got bathed. My son is now 16 and I wish he still possessed that same enthusiasm for dog washing.
I shot this with only available light and a little lite disc reflector to add a catchlight in his eyes. I set it up on our back patio under the awning. I wanted it to be super soft light with just a little bit of direction to it.
It’s still one of my favorite shots of my son. He was a sweet little kid, very loving and tender hearted. I’m sure if he read this now, he’d gag, but that’s how he was. He’s still the same today as he was then, he just tries harder to hide that aspect of his personality. You know 16 year old boys……….it’s more important to be “cool”.
I also like the “old school” quality that can be achieved when shooting wide open as well. If you apply this technique to black & white or toned images it takes on a kind of timeless feel.
I shoot the great majority of my lifestyle images at f 2. It gives me an extremely soft background and the ability to shoot through objects and render them completely out of focus that ads overall depth to most of my shots that I find really appealing.
Like everything else in photography, it’s all subjective, there is truly no right or wrong way to approach any subject. We learn by doing, so go out and play around with shallow depths of field in your images and find out what works for you.
That’s the key to developing your own style and unique way of seeing things.
Don't just stand there! © Tim Pannell Photography
Hi, my name is Tim Pannell and I’ve been a commercial photographer for over 24 years. Sounds almost like some kind of 12 step program. I guess for many, photography can be kind of addictive.
It’s hard to believe it’s been that long. I started out shooting weddings and engagement pictures for just under 2 years. I grew bored of the entire wedding routine and moved our family down to Arizona in 1987 where I got a job as a photo assistant.
I worked for a great guy named Paul Markow. He shot “commercial photography”. Basically, he did a little bit of everything…..architecture, cars, headshots, business portraits, fashion, big productions, little productions, some celebrities. It was a lot of fun and it introduced me to a
whole new world of photography that I’d never experienced before. I enjoyed all of it since it was completely new and fresh at the time.
I learned about all the different ways I could control light, modify it and shape it. I loved the challenges associated with lighting. I loved learning how differently a scene could look just by the way the light hit it. I could alter the mood from bright and cheery, to somber, warm and cozy just by the types of lights I used and how I chose to place them.
By 1990 I was ready to move out on my own and pursue my own career. I was very interested in sports photography for advertising. I didn’t want to cover games or anything like that, I just wanted to create game type situations where I had control of the lighting.
I got a New York rep that got me some higher profile national work and I was off to the races. I shot for Reebok, and Champion Sportswear, McDonalds, Coca-Cola, AT&T, Adidas, Gatorade and whole bunch of other clients. I worked with some of the greatest athletes on tthe planet……….Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Larry Bird, Phil Mickelson just to name a few.
It was a blast! I also started to shoot stock photography in 1992 with an agency in Miami called Sharpshooters. They became my second family, Susie Turnau and Edie Tobias were instrumental in completely changing my career and my focus. There are no words that exist that could express how grateful I am to them for taking me under their wings and guiding me. I’ve lost touch with Susie, but I still get to see Edie from time to time. That relationship changed my entire life. I loved shooting stock images. It was so nice to shoot what I wanted, when I wanted and with whom I wanted.
As time went by, I started to drift more and more away from sports and towards lifestyle photography. I love interacting with people. It was the perfect path for me. I’d shoot seniors, baby boomers, babies, toddlers, families, gen X’ers, you name it.
Sharpshooters was eventually bought out by Corbis and my career shifted gears again. I was able to work with several of the best art directors in the world in locations throughout the world. We’ve shot in Africa, Paris, Barcelona, Costa Rica, Vancouver, Whistler, Norway, London, Denmark, Prague, Greece, Buenos Aires and all over the states as well.
I’ve had to learn not only how to light a wide variety of situations in a wide variety of locations, but how to do it quickly and as simply as possible. In the commercial assignment world, I’ll shoot a handful, 3-4 images a day at most. We spend a lot of time making sure the lights are just right and angles are perfect and exactly where the models will be.
With stock, the goal is to get 50 + pictures in a given day, so I have to be able to light quickly, but still do it well. It’s a great challenge and there are many times of great frustration, trying to find the right balance between the short amount of time I have and the quality of light I want.
Fortunately, I always have an amazing crew of talented assistants, production co-ordinators, make up artists and stylists that juggle an amazing workload to help make everything go unbelievably smooth. When we’re on the road it’s like we’re one big crazy family. It’s a lot of work, but it’s so much fun, you wouldn’t believe it. The images we create always turn out great in spite of whatever hardships or setbacks we encounter from our wide variety of locations and talent we happen to be working with.
I love photography, I love the emotion it can convey and the camaraderie that exists within the crew while we create all these cool images. It’s a wonderful career and a wonderful medium to enjoy.
This blog however, isn’t written for people “in the biz.” It’s written for moms that want to be able to take better images of their kids. It’s written for people who aren’t happy with the quality they get when they take photos of little Jeffrey or Christina.
Maybe they mistakenly thought that if they bought a nice new expensive digital camera they’d instantly get better shots, only to be disappointed when they’re new pictures looked exactly the same as their old pictures, but with higher resolution.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve had people say to me….”Gee, I bet it’s nice having that expensive camera, I know my photographs would look really great too, if I could afford a camera and lenses like yours.” Hey…..thanks for the compliment pal!
What most people don’t realize is that it’s not the camera that makes a great picture, it’s the eye behind the camera and the choices that eye makes with composition, lens choice, f-stop choice and lighting choices.
This blog will be about how you can make better choices so that your photos have life in them. There are tricks and techniques that I know will help you get better looking pictures instantly if you learn to understand them and apply them. I hope the information I share is helpful to you and that you enjoy the act of creating a great photograph of your child as much as i enjoy that process.
I welcome any questions you might have, or feedback you want to give. Photography is a fun ride as it is. You’ll have even more fun once you get good at it. Enjoy the ride!
