Light, Shadow and Motion

Lesson 1: Introduction
Published: August 2012 with Joe McNally

Duration: 1 hour 23 minutes

About Course

This class is all about matching a light to a move, where you start out with the set as an empty box that you fill with your creativity and imagination. As the dancers work through different moves Joe shows you how to light them with both studio strobes and speedlights to achieve a variety of looks, all the while sharing the tips, techniques, and tricks he's learned over his impressive 30 year career.

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On the set again. It's an empty box behind me. The dancers are going to fill that up. I have to respond to their emotion, and grace and elegance with hopefully, an equivalently graceful light. Today's lesson is going to be about that, matching a move to a light or a light to a move, more appropriately. So what we're gonna start off with in the early part of this, is just a strong overhead dramatic light and we'll build out from there. The dancers work well together because they're very familiar with each other, but we're also gonna do some singles. We're gonna do some big flash, we're gonna do some small flash. We'll do some signature moves on the part of the dancers where they really fly into a specific light, and also we'll do kind of a, almost a jazzy, couple kind of swing-dancy kind of thing where they levitate in the air, we light them with cross lights. All that's going to be part of this particular type of lesson, and as always, where I'm going to start, is by talking to the dancers. Talk to your talent. That's one of the first and foremost things you can do before you get behind the camera, before you make an exposure, talk to your talent. So I'm going to go do that now. So, Tamara's working her magic, obviously. Hair and makeup, very important part of any theater, dance, shoot, stage production, anything like that but it's also important to talk with your dancers. So that's what we're going to do now, we've already talked out wardrobe. So just kind of working a little bit against type because usually, again, you associate dance with leotards, or form fitting clothes, etc. So we've got Jeff in kind of a business suit, and Daniel in kind of a gown. Alright. So, here's the thing guys. Here's what I'm going to ask, at least to start off with. We've got an overhead light, a very dramatic overhead light. I'm gonna see how it looks and feels as you guys play up into it. We'll probably do some doubles and some singles into that light. We'll try to move fairly quickly through some various light iterations, and not super speed because we have to keep changing things. But if you guys had a signature move, I mean, some folks ask me this all the time like, what's your favorite picture? It's like asking a dancer like, what's your favorite move? What's your strength? I do want action up in the air. If there's something you can relate to that you know that, this is really where I feel comfortable, I'd love to see that. Okay? In terms of relationships in the air, I'll let you guys kind of work that out organically. You know, you guys have danced a lot together. So, it's a very concentrated pool of light. Its a sliver, its a strip on the set itself, and it's going to be very overhead so all of your activities with your faces would have to be up, not so much down. Okay? Or I'll lose you. Okay? If I need an extra light, we'll bring it in. We'll see how your body language works out under this particular source. Great. Okay. Perfect. Great. Great. Thank you. In the middle of a white set, right? But the set or the background will not be white because I'm not lighting it. Okay? You can make white, black with the absence of light, if you want to. This particular texture back in here, this white seamless will go gray, kind of a steely deep gray, reason being we have a very directed light. It's a soft light but a directed light. It's right overhead. This is called a strip light because it looks like a strip. It's Just, the nature of the light is long and skinny. It's a wonderful light for the human body because as I oftentimes say about a strip light, it's like taking a line of light and drawing it right along the body. So I'm going to have my dancers going up into this light. Now if you can see the reason the background is going as deep and steely as it is, is there's a couple of flanges that we've attached to this strip light that exaggerate its collected nature. There are 2 lightweight pieces of black foam core board running along the vertical edges of it, which instead of allowing the light to go this way, it's gonna really corral it and force it down this way. So, it has a direction that starts this way from the get-go, but as with any soft box, there'll be spreads. So what we're trying to do with those boards, is coral that spread and make sure that the light goes to where we want it to, and not to the background. The reason being, I want the attention and the drama of the lights t stay with the dancers. What I've already spoken to them about, is the fact that their gesture now has to be up. When you light in a specific way, you have to have a specific gesture in return to that. So in other words, they can't leap and look down, because they'll be out of the light. So, in this sense, yes, I've created drama, but often times what goes with drama, and specificity of light, is a specificity of gesture. So the dancers are wonderful in that regard because they can do all that. You can tell them, look, you got to play to this, and they'll be, fine, no worries. Okay? So, that's our starting point. It might not be enough, that's the thing. There might be some amplifications that'll needed. Maybe some side light or a rim light that'll take place, but as I always advocate, your main light begins the process. Your main light is what you achieve or start with. That's what you build all your blocks of lighting on, is the main light. Make sure that you get that right before you start adding components, because light gets complicated. The more lights you have on the set, the more problems you potentially have, and it gets more and more difficult to sort them out. So set up one light, solve that light, and then move on from there. Alright, so, what Jeff has done already on the scene, has executed a move, it seemed like he was almost sort of warming up when I first observed him just pop up into the light. And that's what happens, is that when you work with creative people, it's like all of a sudden, like that sparked something in my head. The sheer simplicity of it coupled with the simplicity of the light seemed to speak well together. So what I asked them to do, is just casually, basically levitate, it's not really, I wouldn't classify this as a dance leap, right? This is not an articulation in the air. This is just, kind of a levitation using the, actually, more in the way of his actor skills than his dancing skills in a lot of ways, because what is wonderfully ironic about the photograph, is he's suspended in the middle of the of the air, and he's just got this casual gesture like, I don't know, I'm just looking at a bird in a tree, or something like that. So that's what inspired the reaction here, and he accommodated that. That's where you ping back and forth with the dancer because they have things tucked up their sleeve, literally that you can't completely know about in terms of just being back for the camera, especially the first time you work with them. But, I have other considerations, as you can see, behind me there's a depth to the picture. I have detail right through his shoes. I don't have too much detail on his paints. Now, you could say, you've got to bring another light in here. My submission back, it would be, I won't do that yet. Because I've got something good going, and here's one rule of photography, that's, there's no rules to photography, everything's designed to be broken. But here's a rule I try not to break, I think about this back at the camera and I say to myself, Joe, try not to screw this up. So, I could screw it up by adding another light. So, I'm gonna let this ride, and live dangerously a little bit with the idea of just the hot rim starting here and then fading, and risk losing some detail in his pants to just make sure that the gesture stays as simple as the light is. Alright, Jeff. If there's a way now, that you could perhaps make this move, put the gesture with your feet is wonderful, you can freelance that if you like. But if there's a way, maybe you could bring a leg just slightly forward a little bit. That would catch some light. Okay. Ready, Cool. That's good, you can see now the folds of the pants, are starting to pick up light, light is very directional. You want to take a look, Jeff? Oh yeah, that's cool. It's definitely cool, definitely like it a lot. See now this has detail. The previous frame, see this is the directional quality of the light. When you have your legs underneath like that, you can see that the pants start to lose, but bring them back forward here, and the wrinkles show because the light is coming straight down. Let's just, you know pretty much the positioning now. Why don't you just do a couple of things and see what happens?

Joe McNally

Joe McNally is an internationally acclaimed photographer whose career has spanned 30 years and included assignments in over 50 countries. He has shot cover stories for TIME, Newsweek, Fortune, New York, Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, and Men's Journal. He has been at various times in his career a contract photographer for Sports Illustrated, a staff photographer at LIFE, and, currently, an ongoing 23-year contributor to the National Geographic, shooting numerous cover stories for those publications.