darker background, I will move my light closer to the subject, but because
my subject is still maintaining the same distance from the background, at least
twice that from the light source, the background will go darker. The key here
is that I’m exposing for my subject, not the background.
If I want to lighten my background, I simply move my light farther away
from the subject. Sometimes I will move my subject in closer to the back-
ground but still far enough away for proper separation and to prevent dark,
harsh shadows. When I move my light away from the subject, the subject’s dis-
tance from the main light is less than twice the distance from the background,
and as long as I’m measuring the light falling on my subject, the background
will go lighter.
116 LIGHTING FOR GLAMOUR PHOTOGRAPHY
There are times when I want to avoid
flash and will use the 300-watt tung-
sten modeling lamp in my Hensel In-
tegra 500 Pro Plus instead. That was
the case in this image of Tess, where
I wanted to use a low aperture in
order to capture the light from the
candles in the background. I also
wanted to capture them with the
unique halo effect you get when they
are out of focus in the background.
The main light had a 7-inch metal
reflector attached to it with a 10-
degree grid placed on its front to
direct the tungsten light in a narrow
beam. This helped induce dark
shadows in the final image. This is a
harsh type of light, so in postproduc-
tion I used Nik Software’s Dynamic
Skin Softener filter for a more flatter-
ing image. (CAMERA:Canon EOS 5D
fitted with a Canon 85mm f/1.2L
USM lens. SETTINGS: 85mm effective
focal length,^1 / 200 second shutter
speed, f/1.2, white balance at
3700K, ISO 400)