Lighting Course

As part of the continual development of my photographic skills, I signed up for a studio flash lighting course to fine tune my lighting setups for my portraiture based shoots.

The course was run by Chris Burfoot of The Flash Centre, the UK's main distributor of Elinchrom studio flash lights. Manufactured and designed in Switzerland, Elinchrom lights are pretty much the 'bee's knees' when it comes to studio flash and are the number 1 choice for a lot of professional photographers, including MSW-Design of course!

I have a set of Elinchrom D-Lite 4's, so the course would help me maximise the features and benefits the lights offer me and my photo shoots.

The course was held on a sunny late July weekend in Lacock, Wiltshire - regarded as the home of photography due to the invention of the positive/negative film process by William Henry Fox Talbot whilst resident in Lacock Abbey.

The course consisted of 2 days of practical lighting set-ups and techniques, with a female model to practice shooting on the Saturday, an additional female model on Sunday morning and a 3 year girl for some baby photo set-ups on Sunday afternoon.

The attached photo is of Saturday's model, Laura, and was taken with a three light set-up - with no Photoshopping! One main light, a reflector to act as a fill light, a hair light and a light on the background to create the gradient effect.

In all, it was a great 2 days. Although I already carry out quite a bit of studio work with my lights, I still picked up loads of tips and tricks and I now have more understanding of why lighting works as it does, helping me to be more creative with it when required.

Thanks to Chris at The Flash Centre, the models and everyone I met on the course.