All language subtitles for 4. Working With Light

You know immediately if you're talking
to someone who wants to talk

shop with you about, I mean, my cameras
don't have names.

If that's what you're thinking about,
you're not taking pictures.

And for many, many years, I just worked
with natural light

and learned about natural light, and
learn to see

what the natural light gives you.

I think what is kind of incredible, and
I guess we have lost this with the dark room,

is to take a photograph,

take a photograph, take the camera, go
out in the world, take a picture,

come back to the dark room,

process the film and see it come up in
the trays.

As a kid, it was just

like magic.

It was just so powerful to see it.

And that's how

I learned, was constantly

looking at this work over and over
again.

And it was always like a miracle to me.

Oh my god, it came out.

You know, I believe it came out.

You know, there are different

issues now, like, you see the image on
the back of your camera.

To me, it sort of stops you as you're
going along.

You know,

it's hard to believe this.

you used to photograph and not know
what you had

for

hours, if not days,

afterwards.

You didn't know if you had it

I think there's still,

that, is still going on.

No, one's going to want to hear this,
but

it's just working.

Photography really is

the

study of light.

I use natural light as a teacher.

I constantly am looking like, where's
the light coming from?

What does it look like?

I'm trying to emulate

actually natural light.

Most of the time I use a lot of the
ambient light, and then I add a small

key light on the person,

usually from the direction of where the
ambiline is coming from.

And I'm very, very aware of

ambient light,

of the light, and where it is.

And I'm

very interested in what

it means to try to get a room to look
like

it really is the natural light that
you're seeing in the room.

And it's one of my biggest frustrations,

is I see what

the natural light looks like, and I
want to try to

take a photograph that feels like that
natural light.

And it just drives me crazy sometimes,
when if you start to put up lights,

you take away

what the natural light is giving you.

And I'm very aware of that.

And it's a constant struggle.

Now with the digital,

you

have, one has this idea that you can
use less light, and you can.

But the imagery changes.

I mean, it really, really does change.

I remember being on the road

with the Clinton

campaign, and I was with several

photographers in New York Times,

Washington Post, and several other
photographers,

and mrs.

Clinton went into a very dark
restaurant,

and

there's hardly any lightning at all.

And I go in and I'm trying to shoot it,
as if I'm seeing the way I'm seeing it,

that light, the very dark,

and it's filled with

100 people meeting mrs, Clinton.

And I'm trying

to shoot in it, and

the walls are wood and

it's just, everything is really dark
inside, and I'm, and I'm trying to

shoot how that looks.

And then I come out, and I get in the
car with the other photographers, and

they're sending in their work, and I'm
looking over their shoulder, and they

shot at sixty.

They say they sit there, films, be for
6400 or 8000 or something.

And the work looks like they were in
mcdonald's.

I mean, it looks bright as hell.

I realize that they have to get the
image regardless

of what happens to the look of the
picture, but

that wasn't the same room I was in.

We're all trying to figure out digital
right now and

understand how to use it.

I like going somewhere with

possibly one small, battery powered
light source,

and that's it, I mean, and then maybe
some

balanceboards

and maybe an umbrella,

in case it's, you don't have a choice
about how bright the sun is.

But I think

that when you start to build up too
much equipment

you're just dead.

You can't move, you

can't Pivot, you can't change your
mind.

It's really about how you see

and

translating

how

the best you can, with the limits of

a camera and

film or digital,

into making imagery.

For the longest time,

I couldn't stand a light inside a room,
and I would put lights outside the Windows

and push it through

and just create light in the room.

But

that got a little

boring after a while, because I didn't
really,

it just looked

canned to me, just like canned.

I continue to use the natural light,
and I add a little bit of strobe.

I do believe the coal kimman has
probably a strobe going through the window.

I could be shooting at a slow sugar
speed,

just because when you mix the slow
shutter speed, which brings in more

ambient light in, with the strobe,

it makes it softer it doesn't make it
softer.

Jack Nicholson, the very same thing.

You have the lights on the car, you
have the sunset, and there's just a key

light on him, a small key light on him,
and you're opening up for the rest of

the picture, and you're balancing

your

little stroke.

That's on.

Jack Nicholson, with the wrists, you
know, obviously I'm not lighting up the

mohawen hills there.

And those are the lights from the car.

That are the backlights.

I mean, you're just balancing the
natural light with this drobe.

And the strobe is giving you some
direction.

I mean, I used to work,

at the end of the day,

you're supposed to work at the end of
the day, the beginning of the day

that's when you have the best light.

But at the end of the day, I mean, you
just sit there and watch the sun just

go.

you would have to meter the sun as it
was going.

And you'd have to be constantly

working out your ratios between the
daylight and the stroblight

to sort of balance

and hence a lot of the work being sort
of overstrobed

at the beginning,

to not really knowing how to sort of
balance that robe

as the light, as the light goes down.

I've sort of learned to use less and
less drove.

And sometimes I shoot,

you know, a good rule of thumb is do
your strobe, maybe

a stop under the ambient light.

So you're actually going, the strobe
really does.

It picks up

a lot.

It's a lot brighter than you think it
is.

I'm scared of a sunny day.

I don't, like sunny days,

got sort of a joke, you know, like, you
know, you get there.

Whoever you're with, says aren't you
glad, I brought you the good weather.

And it's like, you know, for me, for
the kind of work that I do, where I mix

this drobe with the ambient, I pray for
an overcast day

because I can, I can work better and
flatter light and just add my little

strobe to it.

Than if I have

bright sunshine

or no clouds in the sky, I start to

weep if I see, Sunday.

So,

and in the odds of getting,

well, the days of getting your subject
in the early morning or the end of the

day, or are over, you just get the time
you get.

You never get the best time a day

when you're

like, it's suddenly twelve noon.

And you have to

make the best of it.

You have to decide what you're going to
do.

Sometimes I use

shade umbrellas to just

soften the hard light

or the subject.

And then I still add my

microbe.

It's safer, if you're doing this kind
of work, to probably work in the

morning, because you have the option of
having some soft light in the morning.

And then as the light stays up, if
you're working at night,

you get that beautiful light, and then
it goes and it's dark.

So you have a better chance of being
able to work longer in the morning.

I think a wonderful way of

trying to understand

natural light and how it works would be
to

take a willing subject

and

take that person in the same place

three different times a day,

early morning,

noon, early evening,

and notice how the light changes

in each photograph.

And how does the different lighting
change the mood of the image?

Which one do you like?