SLC-2L-07: Journalist Hope Kahn

Hope Kahn is a Maryland-based journalist who is doing all of the sorts of things I was doing at her age: honing her writing and reporting skills, putting out a student newspaper, and always scrambling to find a good local story.

Over the last couple of years she's been punching above her weight class, having been published in national outlets such as Ms. and The New York Times. Suffice to say those are not exactly things I had accomplished before graduating high school.

Her work in the #SinceParkland project is a fantastic example of a product of Generation Lockdown working to effect real change.

Recently we did some head shots that will hopefully allow her to start visually branding herself as the serious, thoughtful journalist she is fast becoming. The setup we used was classic Lighting 101 head-shot-in-a-corner fare, with an L102 and L103 twist.
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L101: Corner = Backdrop and a Reflector

The first level of the lighting in this photo is how manipulating the environment contributes to the look. For a corner headshot, you are using the back wall as a backdrop and the side wall as a reflector.

You can control the darkness of the backdrop by adjusting the ratio of the distance of light-to-subject vs. light-to-backdrop. In this case, the lights are very close to Hope, which will tame that wall behind her even though she is only a couple feet away from it. At this working distance, we were able to tame the cream-colored wall and take it down closer to a medium gray.

And we are also 2-3 feet away from the camera right wall, AKA our reflector. So that will provide modest legibility in the camera-right shadows.

L102: Apparent Light Size

There are a few things going on here. If we look at a pullback, you can see we are using two of the $33 soft boxes that we talked about earlier in Lighting Cookbook.

One, they are pretty close. So they are going to create soft shadows, a nice highlight-to-shadow transition and soft specular highlights.

Two, when stacked they affectively make one big light source. But because of the orientation of the lights (key light pointing down and fill pointing up) the light is going to hit her face from more angles than would a planar light from a single, 2x6-foot strip. Thus, two 2x3-foot boxes are going to appear softer than the equivalent double-sized light source.

This effective light source is spread across many square inches. And since it is so close, the apparent size of the ganged source looks huge when viewed from the position of Hope's face. This makes for soft and understated catch lights in her eyes, because the per-square-inch lumen density is so low.

Check a bigger version of the photo to see what I mean. Bonus: were she wearing glasses, a light source reflection that subtle would fill up the glass, and allow you to see right through it to her eyes without distraction.

That muted catch light is a proxy for the type of speculars you can expect on a person's skin, as mentioned above. In this case it's the difference between shiny, and glow.

Three, this curved, ganged setup is better than a big strip light in that it is not only articulated but the fill is pulled over a little bit to camera right. This lets me reach in and fill those shadows on her face at camera-right.

L103: Chromatically Complex

Lastly, if you look at the pullback you'll see (where the flashes meet the soft boxes) that I am pushing warm light through the key and cool light through the fill. It's not much: a Rosco 08 up top and a 1/2 CTB on bottom.

Having all but sworn off white light, that's about the minimum I would use on a person. Honestly, it is all but invisible. The light and skin tones just look more "real," as compared to the sterile, unrealistic look of white light.

And while it is subtle, you would certainly notice its absence by comparison. For those who normally use a 1/4 CTO as a standard warming gel, the Rosco 08 is similar but with a little less red. The color family is called straw. An R09 is the same, but a bit stronger.
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[BTS / 360]

It's kind of cool how what is essentially a simple head shot also mirrors the evolution of the lighting on this site—and by extension the evolution of my own lighting journey.

But just as important — more important, really — is why a head shot like this happens in the first place. While my kids Ben and Emily were still at Wilde Lake High School, much of my spare shooting bandwidth gravitated towards the things they were involved with: band, soccer, theatre, STEM competitions, etc. And if your own kids are in high school and you are not doing this, you're missing out in so many ways.

And having also been shooting for the Howard County Arts Council for the past ten years, I have really grown to enjoy photographing young people at transitional points in their lives. Specifically, young people who have already become dedicated to something.

I have watched the HCAC young artists move on to some amazing careers. And it's been wonderful to have worked with them at a time when visual assets could help them to shape young emerging brands.

So even though my own kids are moving on, I want to keep on the lookout for people in this age group who are showing both dedication and promise in their fields. This is an exciting time as they prepare to jump into the deep end. My hope is that photos, done now, can help to nudge some arcs in little ways at the right time to help to shape their futures.

For those of you looking for your own ongoing projects, I would very much recommend giving thought to what is important to you, and how you might start to shape and affect those things as a photographer.

FROM: Strobist Lighting Cookbook

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