Strobist Lighting Cookbook

Introducing the Strobist Lighting Cookbook.

With the completion of Lighting 103, SLC will be the next major module on this site.

Strobist has always been a weird sort of hybridized blog. I've never thought there was much long-term value in just throwing a bunch of random posts against the wall every week. Rather, I have tried to create threaded, themed paths for people to be able to easily explore in-depth and learn as they progress.

Lighting 101 was the first of these subject-driven threads, followed by L102 and L103. Concurrent to those core modules was On Assignment, which to date has nearly two hundred entries.

But unlike L101 through L103, On Assignment has no logical structure or flow. This is what the Lighting Cookbook seeks to remedy.

Where On Assignment was haphazard and loosely chronological, SLC will be organized to give you the most benefit out of the growing body of information. The paths will be more efficient, and make more sense. It's designed to grow into something that resembles a cohesive book, created one post at a time.

The examples will be (mostly) speedlight-based, and grouped by the equipment it takes to make them. This way you can learn what you can do with your present gear, and/or make a more informed decision as to whether to add another light to your bag.

The categories for the Strobist Lighting Cookbook are as follows:

No Lights

That's right, no lights. Because a good understanding of ambient light will help you to better use it a functional, additional light in your bag.

Plus, the goal is to learn to move seamlessly between ambient light and flash—or any combination of the two. And in Lighting 103, we learned how important it is to think of our flash and ambient as chromatically, logically connected.

Lastly, some photographers don't yet have lights. Or maybe they still shoot with an iPhone. Either way, a good understanding of what you can do with ambient is absolutely a gateway drug for becoming a lighting photographer. (Shhh...)

One Light

Where most of us start. But combined with a good grasp on ambient light—and how to balance it—you are already really working with two lights.

Shooing with one light can be a compromise between what you'd like to do, and how to solve problems your one light creates. But there are still options and workarounds. We'll explore that.

Two Lights

Any time a photographer asks me how many lights they should buy, two lights is my answer. A second light—in conjunction with ambient—opens up many new possibilities.

A second light gives you the ability to tame the shadows you created with your key light without regard for how you balanced with the ambient.

A second light can become your "false-ambient" environment. Especially if the ambient light is crap.

A second light can create separation, by illuminating your subject or your background.

And in general, my two-light mantra: One light for shape, another for detail.

Three or More Lights

The "or more" part can pretty quickly get you into McNally territory. But no need to worry. If you can balance two lights and ambient, you can balance 57 lights and ambient. It's the same process.

With each light you add, your options obviously increase. But for most people, these "many-lights" photos are the exception rather than the rule.

Case in point: I have, well, a lot of lights. But in truth I use more than three lights maybe 10% of the time. It's a bell curve. And again, the sweet spot is probably at two lights.

Odds and Ends

Here, we'll look at some useful DIY, some out-of-left-field stuff, and add some connective tissue to help fill the gaps and prod your brain between the number-of-lights posts.

I don't want to be too specific here, as I really don't want to fence it in too much yet. Suffice to say this section will be where it goes if it doesn't fit well anywhere above.
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How to Follow Along

Additions will come on no set schedule, as this is being built out concurrent to some other projects.

If you are on the mail list, you'll get a heads-up anytime a new post drops in. Or—in the hell-freezes-over department—I have also set up an Instagram feed for the Lighting Cookbook. So you can learn of new posts there as well.

On Assignment was very much a wing-it-as-you-go kind of thing. I have always regretted its lack of any real logical structure. The Lighting Cookbook is a second chance, to take the real-world information and organize it into something more coherent and navigable.

As for scope, the Lighting Cookbook is totally open-ended. We'll see where it goes when we get there.

More soon,
DH

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