One light only

What do ballerinas, kitchens and lights have in common? Joe McNally explains…

Minimalist lighting with Joe McNally

There were some questions and requests involving this image of the dancer in the kitchen, so here goes. Folks asked about multiple lights, how many Speedlights, were they bounced, how high was the ceiling, and if this was a composite, and how much retouch was done?

It’s a one-light picture. The light is a big source, a four foot Octa, camera left. It is fitted with a fabric grid, which governs and contains the flow of the flash. That’s it. Everything else is natural light. If there’s any finesse to the light at all, it’s in the feathering of it. Andrew Tomasino kept pushing the light back and fourth panning it, but not moving it. Feather it too much towards Jossie, at the table, and she’d look too illuminated. Feather it away and too much towards Yanlis, the dancer, Jossie faded too much.

There was a line of compromise to be found, and I opted to have the dancer lit well and let Jossie fade a tiny bit in the exposure pattern. But we brightened her a bit in Photoshop. We also do basic darkroom work on images; brightening, bit of contrast and some colour to bring the Raw file to life. It’s not unlike what I used to do in the black and white darkroom, when I would print a negative. Now, I say ‘we’ here at the studio, but I shouldn’t include myself. Jon Cospito, who used to work here and has gone on to do wonderful work as a staff photographer for Vayner Media, is an excellent retoucher. He steps in to work on our images.

The crew were great! Andrew and Cali kept telling me to keep Yanlis in the green space, and not let her stray into the line of the wall. I can easily lose track of the minutia of composition when working with a dancer I have not worked with before. I need to try and get a sense of timing down for them. The tuck of her legs happens in an instant, and if you miss it, it’s awkward and almost certainly blurred. There’s that infinitely small window of time where her legs, feet and shoes are just about still, and all the way up; it’s a difficult dance move to nail, more so in the camera’s direction. As such you owe it to the dancer to not screw up the shot.

The camera I used was the Nikon D850, with its amazing resolution, and the lens was a Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8. Pretty straight up, no frills.

It’s a difficult dance move to nail, and more so in the camera’s direction More WOR DS OF NIKON WISDOM from Joe NEXT ISSUE