Page 49 - Lightroom Magazine Issue 28

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One of my many favorite things about shooting digital is the instant feedback it provides and the ways that has forever changed the way I work. Gone are the days waiting around in labs for film to be processed to confirm I got the shot. Now I get to see exactly what I’ve captured—the good, the bad and the ugly—in real time. In fact, this has become such an important cornerstone of my workflow that I shoot almost entirely tethered. Although, even the term “tethered” is now something of an anachronism as tethered shooting can now also be accomplished wirelessly. When I say “tethered,” what I’m referring to is proofing images as you shoot on a screen significantly larger than what’s available on a camera body. Whether I’m using a wired connection to a larger monitor or laptop, or a wireless connection to an iPad, it’s all “tethered shooting” in one form or another.
In addition to the improved exposure, composition, and lighting feedback you get when shooting tethered, you can also apply different visual effects to your images as they’re being shot with today’s leading RAW converters. Lightroom and Capture One Pro both permit Develop presets and Styles, respectively, to be applied either before, during, or after images are captured. This makes it easy to nail down the black-and-white conversion or color grading style of your images as you work, while your clients and subjects are with you on set. Doing this in real time, rather than after the fact when there’s typically a lot of back and forth, not only saves time for everyone involved but also allows you to check the effect your chosen preset or style is having on the lighting, overall mood of the image, contrast, highlights, shadows, hair, makeup, props, and wardrobe.
It’s easy to see that the benefits of shooting tethered far outweigh the effort. Typically, all you need is a USB to USB mini cable compatible with your camera. Tether Tools cables have proven to be very reliable over the years. For those unfa- miliar with tethered shooting, Lightroom makes the process very straightforward—simply go under the File menu, under Tethered Capture, and choose Start Tethered Capture.
edit to taste
Applying a Develop preset for your Lightroom tethered- shooting session is also very simple. Once you’ve entered your tethered capture settings, select a preset via the Develop Settings pop-up menu found in the floating Tethered Capture window. This window can be hidden or revealed by pressing Command-T (PC: Ctrl-T). Presets can either be purchased and
used as is, customized as needed and renamed for future use,or created from scratch. The same is true for Capture One Pro 10, which also comes with many fantastic built-in Styles from which to choose.
It’s completely subjective and based on personal taste but, essentially, when I’m choosing a black-and- white conversion preset or style, or creating one from scratch, I’m generally trying to re-create the character- istics I loved most about traditional black-and-white gelatin silver prints. I’m looking for heightened contrast, deep blacks that don’t sacrifice shadow detail, crisp whites that maintain information in the highlights, and an overall silvery quality that typified black-and-white prints at their best. I do this by leveraging the powerful controls available in both Lightroom and Capture One Pro. That means tweaking the individual color sliders that make up the black-and-white conversion, looking at how these changes affect the tonal range of the conversion, dialing in the right contrast, and using the Shadows, Highlights, Whites, and Blacks sliders until everything is just right.
it all starts with lighting
In my opinion, you have considerably more latitude with con- trast when you’re working with black and white than you do shooting in color. This is because you’re dealing solely with tones. As much as I use postprocessing and black-and-white conversions to achieve the looks I’m after, it all starts with lighting. Choosing the right lighting tools and techniques to achieve stellar black-and-white captures is an essential part of the equation.
The good news is you don’t have to use exactly the same equipment I use to achieve the looks you’re seeing in this article. As matter of fact, there’s no shortage of strobes and lighting modifiers that will perfectly fit the bill. What’s more important are the properties and characteristics of the light modifiers employed. No matter what lights and modifiers you’re using, the same considerations apply.
Factors such as interior finish (silver or white), size, and
the depth of the modifier used will each play a key role in
the amount of contrast, and how quickly the light that’s pro-
duced falls off. If you’re like me and you prefer a punchier,
silvery black-and-white appearance, than you’d be well served
by choosing a modifier that has a silver interior. This serves
several purposes: In addition to delivering more contrast or specularity than a similarly sized and shaped white interior 049
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