Studio Anywhere 2: Hard Light

This book is uniquely useful to photographers because it talks about how to use hard light, the one thing other books on photography tell us to avoid at all cost. Even more than that though, Fancher gives us outside of the box ideas and explains everything in an understandable and easy to follow manner. I don’t think you’ll find a better book on using hard light in your photography.

Right off the bat we love the author because he suggests we not buy fancy new gear until we have reached the limitations with the equipment we have. He points out that he also learned more about how to use the equipment than had he if he bought the pro stuff right away. Gave him a broader view of what he could do with light. In the beginning of the book he makes a fun suggestion: shut your window blinds to create a natural light gobo — I love when photographers give us tips and tricks that don’t require a lot of technical knowledge or new equipment 🙂

I love iPhone tips and this author does not stint. He tells us, for example, that you can accomplish exposure lock on the phone’s camera which I did not know. He also tells us how, over a few pages with illustrations so that we really understand how to get much better pics out of our phones, especially in hard light. Flancher gives us more than other authors might give us regarding how to use light; for example, gives the example of a situation where the model would be in a very tight corner — so how do you set up your off-camera lights to illuminate the scene? He shows us and I have not seen that situation addressed anywhere else-though it must happen fairly often when shooting indoors. Lens flare seems to be a trendy thing in photography these days according to the magazines I peruse, and our author does not disappoint. He has a whole section on intentional lens flare.

I love the part where he talks about doing outdoor shoots on a rainy day, yet making the picture look as if it’s a sunny day! The cloning of raindrops and flash does the trick. That’s something else I have not seen elsewhere. This author seems to have done a good job of ferreting out issues not usually talked about. I especially enjoyed his section on inspiration where he talks about finding out that there are so many photographers better than you are 🙂 I find that I get discouraged, too, seeing photos so much beyond what I’m doing but he said he has learned not to pay attention to the competition! Instead, he uses the best pictures he sees and reverse engineers them to find out how they were made. That’s a very good piece of advice and would reduce my envy level a bit 🙂

Toward the end of the book Fancher has a chapter called “painting with shadow“. Although shadows are mentioned in most photography books discussing light, I don’t believe I’ve seen a section entirely devoted to working with shadows. Grateful to the author for his thoughtfulness.

In one of the last chapters the author does a brief a memoir of what it was like to establish himself as a commercial photographer. One never sees this much in photography books unless it’s a book specifically written on the business aspect of photography and I think it was a nice change of pace to come across it in a book on lighting. At the conclusion, the author shows us a few scene set ups in detail when he shot portraits on site. I found it helpful because it felt as though you were right along with him setting it up. Great book to have on your shelf when you face hard light!