Workshop: Studio Lighting Introduction

“Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography.”
– George Eastman

Next workshop: Saturday 14th June, 2025.
Booking now, 4 places only available. Deposit required to confirm your place.
Please email [email protected]
This workshop can be run to order if you have an interested group of photographers.

Location: Courtenay Studios, 1st floor, 37 Courtenay Place, Wellington.
Workshop places limited to 4 (will run with 3).

Please contact  James Gilberd  now to register your interest in this workshop. Numbers are restricted to four people on each workshop, so you get plenty of opportunity to get your hands on the lighting gear, and to make sure we get to cover what interests you. This is a practical workshop, not a mere demonstration!

Cost: $240.00 including GST
A deposit of $80.00 is required to confirm your place on this workshop.
See Conditions
Please book early to avoid missing out on a place. Also, if the timing doesn't suit you, please email me anyway. We have run this same workshop over two weeknights as an alternative. The workshop can also be run on demand for special interest groups.

Workshop outline:

• The workshop concentrates on the use of studio flash lighting
  
• We also briefly cover continuous lighting (LED) and on-camera flash
  
• Use and effects of various lighting modifiers and shaping tools: softboxes, honeycomb, snoot, reflectors, absorbers
  
• Light metering and exposure control, lighting ratios
• Histograms and over-exposure (highlight clipping) alerts
  
• Use of digital cameras in the studio environment, tethered shooting
  
• How camera controls work in relation to both flash and continuous light
  
• Lighting for products & still life - just the basics
• Lighting techniques for portraiture - the main focus of this workshop
• Working with models, directing, working with portrait subjects
• Plenty of hands-on time to experiment & take your own shots
• Answering various questions you have, where possible in a practical way
• Full set of notes provided
• Courtenay Studios is equipped with Elinchrom Pro HD-series studio flash units and accessories.
  

The studio lighting workshop,  tutored by James Gilberd, is aimed at people with a basic to intermediate knowledge of photography who are looking to become more professional and potentially earn an income from their photography, or who want to extend their creativity.

Understanding lighting concepts will also improve your general photography, indoors or out, through gaining a deeper understanding of how light works in any photographic environment or situation. Potentially, once you get the concept of using lighting to improve your photographs, the understanding can be applied anywhere, making the whole outside world effectively your studio.

If you're not a photographer, but maybe an art director or designer, you may find this workshop very helpful. You will better understand the photography and lighting side of things, and the terminology and working processes of professional photographers.

Bring along your own camera. Tripods are available.

Mirrorless cameras:

• Make sure your camera has a hot shoe connector, or a flash synch. terminal (the latter is only found on pro-level cameras these days)
• As we'll be using low exposure settings for flash (such as 100 ISO, 1/125 sec. at f8 or lower) and the studio is relatively dark, it helps if you can set your camera up so you can see the image onscreen in low room light with daylight-level exposure settings. (This may take some figuring out so it's good if it can be done before the workshop.)
• Sony Mirrorless cameras: turn Live View Effect off (usually found in menu 2)
  

Film cameras: you're welcome to shoot film during the workshop, but a digital camera is still a useful tool for assessing lighting and exposure prior to shooting film.

Compact digital cameras: these are not the usual choice for studio shooting, but can be used if:

• your camera has a hot shoe mount for flash
• You can set manual exposure (M), and control the lens aperture and ISO settings manually.

If in doubt, please email me about it before the workshop. We have spare DSLR cameras that can be used during the workshop. Preferably bring your own SD card.