PRO RESULTS with just a Speedlight

When most people get into portrait photography, they hit a bit of a wall, not creatively, but financially. They're told they need to go and build a full studio. Give me one speed light, a cheap trigger, a basic light stand, a soft box, and maybe a roll of gray paper. I can shoot 90% of my portfolio with it, easily. And in this video, I'll show you how I would do that without spending more than about $300. This isn't about shortcuts or hacks. It's because good photography comes down to mood, light, and having a clear vision of what it is you're trying to create. The gear itself, that's just the tool that gets you there. Okay, let me show you something. This portrait, clean, moody, professional, was shot with a bare speed light bounced off of a white wall. I didn't even use a soft box and no fancy modifiers, not even a diffuser cap, just light aimed properly. And the reason it works isn't the kit. It's because I understand what the light is doing. So something I want you to take from this video is that people don't care what you shoot with. They care what your work looks like. And if your lighting feels intentional, sculpted, and controlled, you're already better than 90% of the other people out there who are still trying to buy their way forwards. So how does all this work with the lighting? It's about making a tiny light source feel big. A speed light by itself is harsh, but if you bounce it off a wall or a sheet that's hanging on the wall, suddenly your wall becomes your light source. Here's a trick. You don't push the flash right up against the wall. Pull it back so it can beam that light out and spread before it hits the wall and then bounce back as a very large light source. And if you don't have a suitable white wall background, buy a gray paper roll. They're pretty cheap and you don't even have to have a full backdrop system. When I started, I was just cutting off pieces of paper from a gray paper roll and taping it to the wall. It's important to not be too precious here. We're photographers. You need to adapt and make things happen. So how to do this? I like to bring my subject mostly at least a meter away from the background. That gives you some separation and the bounce light wraps around the subject and that gives you that fall off that you're looking for that looks expensive, that has those shadow gradations that look really good. And this isn't cheating or just like making things up. This is technique. Now let's level up just a bit. If you want more control and contrast, this is where a softbox comes in. Here's the gear that I use. It's a three by two softbox. I use one that's actually made by Bowens. This one would work just as well. It's really cheap. Why not use it? But why add a softbox? It's a good question. Bounce light is soft, forgiving, but it sort of floods everywhere. A softbox gives you more directional control. It gives you potentially more contrast as well. Think of it like swapping a wide beam for a more concentrated beam. Here's the setup. Subject's turned away from the camera. Light is off axis. Softbox is close, like actually really close. The closer you get your softbox, the more contrast you're going to have in your pictures. So most photographers think the bigger the softbox and the further back it is, the better the light. And I did used to think that too as well, really. But if you look at this shot, I've actually got the softbox pretty close to her face. And that's what's giving me this contrast and drama. If I pulled it back, it would have been flatter and a little bit more boring. The closer you bring the softbox, the faster the light falls off, the more control you have over the shadows and the more contrast you're going to get. This is how you actually sculpt with light. You're not just making things soft. You're controlling exactly where the light ends and where the shadows begin. So my settings, when I'm using a speed light like this, are usually manual mode, ISO 100. The aperture is usually F2.8 to F4. And shutter sync for the camera that I use is about 160th of a second, but Google your camera and find out and set it to that. You'll need to kill the ambient light in the room. So that means blinds over windows, shut off the lights and so on, because otherwise you're going to get a lot of light leaking into that shot. Killing all of that ambient light is going to mean that you can control the exposure more and the way the lighting looks with your flash. Here's a mistake that drives me mad with photographers that I see. And it's not their fault, but it's just how they're taught. They just put the light at 45 degrees and start taking pictures. And that's kind of the end of it. They don't think too much about the distance. They don't think much about changing the angles or anything like that. They're not really thinking about what the light is actually doing and the mood that it's creating and the story that they're trying to tell. So you'll be creating mood and atmosphere now, not just adding lights and lighting a subject. And once you get that part down, your portraits are going to start looking completely different. And I really mean it. They will look completely different once you start paying attention to what it is that you're actually doing with your lighting setup, rather than trying to chase that next lens or camera, or looking at that Profoto lighting pack. Working with a simple setup like this and actually making it work will change your work. And if you want to get more in depth with lighting setups, I have a free lighting guide that you can download. The link is in the description down below. It covers some of these setups that I use more frequently in small spaces. And if you like the look of my work and you want to see how I edit these pictures step-by-step, how I control skin tones, contrast, highlights, detail, all of it, and get this sort of more painstaking and moody look, I've got a full Portrait Studio Editing Masterclass. Links are in the description down below. It will teach you from start to finish how I edit these pictures. Anyway, that's all for today. I'll see you guys again in the next video. Take care. Bye-bye.