P#22 Q6: John Siskin Shares a Few of His Creative Lighting Secrets

Mix it Up

John Siskin: You want to have a good toolkit for your lights. You want to be able to make broad light sources, and you want to be able to make sharp tight light sources.

If I have my strobes out on location, I'm going to have a light panel, or maybe two or three light panels. I'm going to have a couple of umbrellas. I rarely use soft boxes at all anymore, but I'm going to have umbrellas in three or four different sizes and different materials so that I have a bit more control over the way the umbrella works. I'll have silver umbrellas, satin umbrellas, and so on.

All that stuff gives me control over my light, but it's all used for diffusing. Those are all large light sources that make the light softer and bigger. I also have another toolkit for making light smaller so that I can put hard light just where I want it and create drama. For that I use the barn doors, which allow you to control the light so that it's not going out at 60 degrees from your reflectors. Instead, it's going out at ten degrees from your reflector or something like that.

Snoots, which are little tubes, and grid spots, which look a lot like honeycombs from bees, keep your light from spreading so you can put a spot just where you want it. These are the kinds of tools that make lighting more creative.

You need a good toolkit in order to make your light work. There are a couple of other tools that I've used over the years that have been really important to me. I've used a lot of slide projectors as tools and I think that we may have at least one image in the group that we picked that uses them.

These allow you to put a spot on something that's as little as two millimeters across. It's a really amazing thing. It would be better if my particular camera had a better ability to work at high ISOs, but these are really marvelous light sources.

The last thing that I wanted to mention is filters. I've already mentioned Rosco and lighting filters. You should really go to their websites and try to find out more about the colors that you can bring to bear on your lighting. They allow you to make something warm or cool or green or any color you want.

All of this stuff is available from Rosco, but there are a couple of other manufacturers out there and I don't want to play favorites. Rosco is the brand that I use most of the time, however.

All of these things work as ways to bring more creative control into a subject that is already about creative control -- lighting.

To Sum Up

The right lighting means using the right equipment, and creative control of that lighting is a key element in any successful photograph. According to John, mastering creative lighting is simply a matter of manipulating your light sources into doing what you want them to do, and the right kit can help you do just that.