If you are anything like me, you have been involved in photography for a few years now and your skill level has been building on a pretty steady basis and people are noticing that you are producing some pretty good work. You like what you have been able to do so far with natural light, but you have come to the point where you want to start adding artificial light to your work. You need to be able to control the light more carefully. This may be for portrait work or for other still life work, either way, the need is the same, you need to control the light.
Ok, you know you want to control the light, but you have no idea of the complexities of this new facet of photography and you certainly do not have an endless budget. Do you want an extravagant studio of huge expensive lights? What technologies are out there an available to me? How much to I have to spend to have enough? What in the world is an intrepid photographer to do you ask?
Well you have come to the right place. I was on that exact journey. I found myself asking many other photographers what they were doing for lighting. Of course this can be helpful but they are only an expert on what they have done, not on all possibilities. I have asked the people at the photography stores, and yes, they can be very helpful also, but their final answer is often times the product that they have available to sell at the moment.
Finally (with the help of my local photography store guy ) I found the resource that I was actually looking for. He pointed me to the book Minimalist Lighting: Professional Techniques for Location Photography
Now this book was all that I was looking for. First of all Kirk explained the journey that his photography career had traveled through. He needed to control the light just like we do, but he came from the era of huge professional lights and huge expense so he had all that experience. But, after doing that for years and lugging all that stuff around and loosing it on flights or having to rent bigger cars or trucks to get that stuff around, he knew there had to be a better way. And it just so happened that we were experiencing a technology explosion that allowed us all to get the job done with much smaller units and at a much smaller cost. Hence the concept of Minimalist Lighting was born. Do more with less!!!
Kirk has expertise across many camera brands and types of equipment so his knowledge and recommendations are specific for your camera and for your needs. He explains both equipment and methods for getting done what you need to get done. He makes recommendations for several different configurations that will allow you to do what you need to do at a price that can much more easily fit your budget.
Kirk was exactly the resource I was looking for and I highly recommend this book to you! Now it is time to be on the hunt for my actual equipment!!
Get out and enjoy your shooting.
