Beginner's Guide to Studio Lighting

Studio lighting is not so intimidating with Mark Floro taking you by the hand around the studio.

Intimidated by studio lights? You are not alone. Photographic studio lighting seems so complicated that most novice photographers just look the other way. Why do you think so many photographers prefer to shoot outdoors? You are locking yourself out of a vast world of creative possibilities by avoiding studio lights. Lighting is the key to photography, and studio lighting allows you unlimited creative control over it, opening up doors to portrait, fashion, product and advertising, still life, architectural, and conceptual photography. Spend one day with Mark Floro and forever take the fright out of light!

What will be covered

• Basic principles of lighting
• What, why, and how of professional studio lights and accessories/light modifiers
• Actual demonstration and comparison of
  • flash/strobe vs. ambient light
  • custom white balance
  • techniques and limitations of the participant's own strobes and accessories
  • wireless triggers

Who should attend

All photographers who want to level up from basic and straight "camera work," especially those who are planning to enter the fields of product and advertising, portrait, architecture, and fashion photography, whether professionally or as a hobby.

Prerequisites

Participants must have a very good grasp of the workings of their camera, and preferably must have attended the PCCI Basic Photography class.

Ideally, the participant brings

• a d-SLR with one or more lenses
• strobe unit(s) with accessories
• tripod
• lots of memory cards
• lots of batteries and the camera's battery charger
• laptop
• card reader
• the camera's software for reading and opening RAW files
• other accessories which the participant can "experiment" on

Instructor

Mark Floro likes to describe himself as an old-school photographer, which means he gets the photo right at the time of exposure, using proper lighting, not afterward in the computer. He studied photography and lighting in the United States, and established himself here as a professional food and advertising photographer.

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