Single strobe setup

I lost patience and focused instead on natural light. By spending the time to learn how lighting actually works, I eventually gained a better understanding of how to use strobes.

In this article, I hope to share with you how to use just one strobe to create jaw-dropping results. The following article will not be very complex or dense.

Personally, reading intricate details on how and when to use strobes generally causes my eyes to glaze over. This is an attempt to show you when and where to take a portrait using the sun and one single strobe. For more information, look into this article where I discuss finding and using good natural light.

In the set of photos featured in this article, the midday sun was simply too harsh to shoot outside. And when trying to filter the sunlight inside the barn, I found that there was no light source besides a few small windows. When I first started photography, I was under the impression that if you want to use strobes you need multiple strobes.

Over the years I learnt how wrong I was. Still to this day I bring along 5 strobes thinking I may need them and only end up using one. The same way I only have one light source when using natural light, you only need one strobe when using artificial light. This brings us to the next point.

So what exact gear do you need? I've used a dozen modifiers before landing on an octa box. It's a modifier that never goes wrong. Any octa box will do.

I have an Elinchrome Rotalux 53 inch. I pair it with my Einstein flash head and a vagabond battery pack that doubles as a weight. This guy produces results I hope to achieve sometime before I leave planet Earth. Photographers tend to get excited on a shoot and they channel the excitement towards fiddling with strobes and setting them up.

Often, they completely neglect the fact that no one cares about the lights, all the client wants is good result. That is why it is crucial to set the gear aside and walk around the location to find a good spot to shoot. For this shoot, I was feeling a rustic look. The image below is a result of walking around the farm and eventually stumbling across this room that had the sun directly beaming through a window in the ceiling.

I instantly fell in love with it and I had my model stand at the door way of the room. Part of the rustic vibe I was going for meant including the wood beam and the fence, so I made sure to include it. I took a few quick portraits of her getting backlit from the sun knowing her face would come out dark.

Then and only then did I go get my strobe and set it up right next to me. I lifted it a drop above eye level and angled it down. What is important is everything else that is happening on the shoot. The purpose of the flash, is to simply give some soft light to the skin.

What matters most is that your backgrounds and bokeh are perfect. For more information on bokeh and complimenting colors, check out this article. Next, the key to making your light look natural is to take the portrait exactly how you'd take it using ambient light only. Make sure the background and ambient light is perfectly exposed. Once you've achieved this, you can turn on your flash and set it accordingly.

Don't touch your camera settings, rather, fool with the flash. Moving it even one foot farther from your subject can make the biggest difference. If the subject is boring, a photographer can use all the gear in the world but the results will not turn any heads.

Concentrate on poses, expressions and wardrobe. This will make a huge difference. Lastly, retouching will seal the deal. Here's how a portrait looked before I retouched it. He is known for his naturally lit portraits and unique retouching techniques. Dani is currently running "The Project" - Taking headshots of fellow photographers as he travels the world. Check out the Fstoppers Store for in-depth tutorials from some of the best instructors in the business. Great article Dani! And your friend Rey is one amazing photographer, never did I see his shots before but I instantly fell in love with hist shots and style.

Reminds me how beginner and far away I am from true talents like you two and so many others. And man, do I want to get myself some kind of octabox after this article, I have already a 60 dollar flash. Love it! Have you experimented with color gels on the flash to match the ambient light? A flash is generally super blue and may not always match that "golden hour" look.

What do you think? But I think it really depends on the type of look you're going for and what the location all at the time you're shooting at depends if you should go full natural lighting, just a single strobe as the article is going for, or more then one light even if the sun is still up. Nice stuff! For you to get that shallow depth with strobes I assume you use an ND filter? To create very soft light, almost mimicking daylight soft and directional with one light.

One strobe attached to a large umbrella was placed behind a 6x6 scrim similar to this one. The strobe is approximately 6 feet away from the subject and one foot behind the umbrella. Both the scrim and the flash are 20 degrees to the side of the subject. The scrim is supported by two C-stands and is angled slightly down to further mimic sunlight streaming in through a window. The strobe is shooting through a large umbrella. My goal was to replicate daylight and to do that with only one light source, I needed to significantly soften the quality of the light.

For that a scrim is perfect! I loved the quality of this light! The angle of your strobe and the angle of the scrim. Experiment with the scrim at different positions to see all the ways you can bend the light. Move the lights around your subject to create a completely different mood. Ex: place it directly overhead like sunlight, at 45 degrees for stronger shadows, etc….

Use one light photography to create sharp contrast on the subject, hard shadows against smooth white skin. On camera left, the strobe was placed up high and angled sharply down to create those hard shadows. The strobe was placed approximately 15 feet back from the model to make those shadow lines crisp.

Remember, the closer your light source is, the softer the light and resulting shadows will be. Keep moving that light further back until you get those extra sharp shadows. Then, to keep the shadows on the opposite side from going black, a white V-flat was placed on the far side of the model. This ensured that the shadows still retained detail.

A reflector dish shapes the direction the light takes once leaving the flash tube. A good rule to follow is that the wider your reflector dish is, the softer the light. Depending on the brand of your strobe, you can purchase dishes in a variety of sizes, finishes, and outputs. To heighten the effect, you can also use a long throw reflector which gives an even greater intensity of light and can be used over much longer distances.

I experimented through the shoot by changing the position of the strobe. John Aldred is based in Scotland and photographs people in the wild and animals in the studio. You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube. Dunja Djudjic is a writer and photographer from Novi Sad, Serbia. You can see her work on Flickr , Behance and her Facebook page. Alex is a commercial photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She mostly shoots people and loves anything to do with the outdoors.

You can see her work on her website and follow her Spanish landscape adventures on instagram. Adam owns a production company that specializes in corporate marketing and brand strategy. His videos have collectively hit over a quarter billion views. Submit A Story. The camera is then placed at the pointy side and the subject on the wide side. Share Tweet Flipboard.