This fall, I took an Advance Studio Lighting course at Langara.  Studio lighting isn’t something I was too keen on mastering, since I mostly shoot with natural light.  But this is a pre-requisite course to a host of other courses I want to take, and it’s a part of the degree requirement.  So I sucked it up and registered for it.

I have to say, I have learned a lot during the course, and I actually enjoyed some aspects of it.  I felt like there’s a bit too much home assignments and they really stressed me out.  I would have really liked to have more in-class or in-studio shooting time.  But I have to admit, sometimes struggling through things on my own really solidified the learning for me.

Here’s an image that took me almost 2 hours to set up, compose, shoot, and re-shoot (about 15 times).  The exposure took 30 seconds, and the lighting was done with a flashlight.  I rolled up a piece of construction paper into a cone, and stuck the flashlight into the cone so that only a small beam of light came through the tip of the cone.  I “painted” the scene with this small beam of light, emphasizing certain areas over others to create the un-even and dramatic lighting.  I quite liked the result, and so did my instructor.