Dani Diamond is well known for his portraiture work, particularly his natural light work. But of course, he works with artificial lighting too, and in this great video tutorial, he will walk you through a one-light setup and how he modifies it to create a professional-level portrait.
Coming to you from Dani Diamond with V-Flat World, this helpful video tutorial will show you how to create flattering portrait lighting using a single light. As you will see, Diamond significantly modifies and shapes the light, but this is actually a really important thing to learn and work through. A lot of newer photographers assume that crafting a setup revolves solely around adding more lights until the desired look is achieved. And while it is certainly true that many looks require or at least benefit from multiple lights, a lot of the time, it is not additional lights that needed, but rather, some careful modification to alter the quality, position, and spread of the existing light. Not only will this save you from the effort (and often, the cost) of more complicated setups, it will make you a better lighting technician.Check out the video above for the full rundown from Diamond.
Very smart, but impractical. I don't have the space or the equipment. But the images are lovely
That is precisely what I was thinking.
You don't need that much space to do what he is doing in the video. Just apply the inverse square law. If you have a light source that is half the size of that giant scrim then set it up twice as close to the subject as Dani did. The net result is the same light quality.
I hate being a jerk, but I really am tired of videos like this with headlines like "beautiful light with just one flash" where steps 1 and 2 are "have a huge studio with 30' ceilings" and "get an 8x8' scrim. Yes I know you can bodge together something similar with a softbox and sheer cloth thumbtacked to your 7' spare bedroom ceiling, but it's another case of 'the gear doesn't matter' (just one flash!) 'except the gear matters'.
That bitching aside, it's still a great lesson for new strobe shooters to learn about how to soften light and the value of big light sources, and Dani is an excellent photographer of course.