Meet Riana.
Riana Horner is an 18-year-old woman looking to break into a modelling career. She’s from Essex, England.
I met Riana last week when I took a few hours out of the business to relax and re-invigorate an interest I’ve had in photography for many years. Riana came along to a photo-shoot being held for 5 amateur/semi-professional photographers looking to improve their skills. We were being led by a professional photographer and looking particularly at lighting and the impact it can have on pictures of people.
Nick, our professional trainer didn’t believe that his students needed to know all the technical ins-and-outs of every aspect of a great photo. So, we didn’t deep-dive into the technical specifications of all the kit, we just covered the basics – how to dial in the correct settings in your camera to create a perfectly exposed image, where to position a light to create different effects, what the gotchas are when using flash lighting and how to find the ‘sweet-spot’ of your own camera’s settings.
Don’t get me wrong, Nick knows that he’s not teaching us the principles of capacitance when firing a flash-gun or how to create the perfect lighting scenario for a multi-million-pound Hollywood production. We’re a group of people, of varying ability, with varying quality cameras, some of us starting to do commercial work and needing to create results that others will pay for.
So, 5 trainees, one model, a black/white background and a single flash-head were squeezed into the cozy surroundings of a corporate-box of Essex County Cricket Ground for a few hours one Friday afternoon.
We got started taking some pictures of each other and what immediately struck us all was a) the huge impact that slight changes in lighting position has and b) the importance of a little gadget called a ‘light-meter’ that would show us the right settings to dial into our cameras. The make/model/type of camera being used was largely irrelevant. It didn’t matter whether it was modern and expensive or old and cheap.
We started by creating great, perfectly lit pictures of each other – even of the one person in the room with a definite face for radio (me!). Wow – what a difference that makes. We were moving the light around, seeing the different effects, but all the time checking our light-meter and understanding the impact that deviating from its path would have. Then, Riana arrived.
What you can see on this page are a couple of the 100 or so photos I took. You’d have thought they’d have been created by a professional, but no – this is from a novice given the right guidance on how to create great pictures with a plain background, in a corporate box at a cricket ground. And yes, I was….
The person with the oldest camera
The person with the cheapest camera
The person with the least experience
Yet with a very simple setup – one model, one light – this is flavour of the stunning results that can be achieved.
Stunning results achieved by understanding the concepts not the detail. Then doing the simple things well.
So the question is….. how different is that from running a business?
