the subject’s pupils to get smaller. I’ll place a studio monolight head with a 7-
inch reflector and a 10-inch grid next to my ring flash with the modeling light
turned on at full power and the flash turned off. The idea is not to use the
monolight flash portion, but to only add illumination from the modeling lamp
to cause the subject’s pupils to reduce in size without causing squinting. When
the ring flash fires, it will overpower the monolight’s shadows and the warmer
color produced by the tungsten modeling lamp. The monolight can also be
set with the source’s control set to Proportional, not Full, so that it can be
dimmed down to prevent squinting.
Using the modeling lamp to contract the pupil and reduce red-eye also
allows us to show more of the colored area of the eye (the iris) in the portrait.
This is especially evident when you are photographing subjects with blue,
green, light gray, or hazel eyes. You can use this technique even with beauty
dishes, softboxes, and other light modifiers when working in darkened rooms
or photography studios.
Another method to avoid red-eye and the much harsher light produced by
such a specular source of light from a small ring is to replace the standard clear
LIGHTING BASICS 39LEFT—This Elite Agency model was asked to carefully balance herself on the 5-
inch wide edge of an infinity pool during one of my glamour photography work-
shops in the U.S. Virgin Islands. She was illuminated with a 1200-watt-second
Hensel Porty Premium battery pack powering a Hensel Ring Flash fitted with a
Hensel OctaHaze light modifier. I also placed a Rosco #3411 (three-quarter)
CTO inside the OctaHaze and directly over the flash tube, changing the color
temperature of the light source from daylight-balanced flash (5400K) to a
warmer tungsten light (3200K). I then set my camera white balance to 3700K,
basically telling the camera that my light source was more toward the tungsten
end of the spectrum. This caused the camera to add blue (similar to an 80A
blue glass filter). As my flash went off and illuminated my subject, it didn’t il-
luminate the sky. Therefore, the model is correctly color-balanced—with just a
slight warm tinge, since I set my white balance at 500K more than traditional
tungsten. This white balance technique is what creates the saturated blue water
and sky. This photo was also taken soon after the sunset, thus the low shutter
speed and aperture. I might add, I hand-held this camera while standing in the
pool of water—not because I’m that steady, but because the short duration of
the flash is effectively the shutter speed for exposure of the model. After the
flash pop, the shutter remained open to register the light from the sky. This cre-
ated an interesting camera-shake/ambient-light border around the model. The
final image was postprocessed in Adobe Photoshop using the Nik Software
Bleach Bypass filter. (CAMERA:Canon EOS 5D fitted with a Canon 85mm f/1.2L
USM lens. SETTINGS:85mm effective focal length,^1 / 5 second shutter speed, f/1.4,
white balance at 3700K, ISO 100)