Studio & Location Lighting Secrets for Digital Photographers

Introduction

Those of you who know my work know that I specialize in travel photography ... and often jaunt off to places such as Mongolia, Thailand, Kenya, Namibia, Central and South America, Fiji, Morocco, the Arctic, Antarctica, Galapagos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Italy's Venice (where the photograph on the left was taken) to make photographs for my books, magazine articles and web sites.

So you may be surprised to find me doing a book on studio lighting. Heck, I don't blame you. As recently as May of 2008, while I was photographing Huli Wigmen in Papau New Guinea, this book was not even a concept. But as I began thinking about lighting techniques, it became clear that there are definitely tools and methods that work well... and some that don't. This book contains ideas, techniques and ways to use equipment in various types of photography studios as well as out in wide world of on-location photography.

But here's the thing: Photography is always about, well, photography. The principals of lighting, composition, exposure and working with subjects (in the case of photographing people) remain the same. The three images above were taken in different locations by different photographers and span 31 years; they illustrate my philosophy well.

So when Wiley Publishing asked me to do a book on studio lighting, I jumped at the chance. What fun, I thought .... keeping the following expression in ...