©Marco Fazio

Each month we highlight a certain item in Profoto’s rich assortment of Light Shaping Tools. (Previous articles can be found here.) This month we talk to Marco Fazio about a clever little tool that can be used for creating theatrical lighting effects: the Spot Small.

You can learn a lot about most Light Shaping Tools by just their names. Take the Spot Small, for instance. The Spot Small is a spotlight – a small spotlight. Well, it is not actually a spotlight, but rather a tool with a built-in lens, which you attach to a flash head to create a spotlight-like light.

The result is an even and circular light spread with sharp shadows and almost no fall-off. This makes the Spot Small the perfect projection tool. For instance, it can be used to project shapes and patterns on a background. It is for this reason that the Spot Small was made to accept M sized (66 mm) gobos. But you can of course also use put the spotlight to creative use as it is. The images London-based photographer Marco Fazio shot for Italian designer Carlotta Actis Barone is a great example of the latter.

“Carlotta explained to me that her collection was inspired by the early Twentieth century, the woman’s emancipation movement and the growing awareness of femininity,” says Marco. ”This gave us the idea to work with a spotlight and to use it as a symbol for the woman’s changing status in society during this time. In other words, we wanted to light the subject with a hard and very defined light with sharp shadows, as if she was standing in the limelight on a stage.”

There are several tools that can create this kind of light – the MultiSpot and the ZoomSpot, for instance. But these tools have the flash head built-in and have to be connected to a generator. Marco, on the other hand, wanted to work his D1 monolights. This meant that he needed a projection tool that is mounted directly onto the D1, and the Spot Small is in fact optimized for this very purpose. (more…)

©Jean Gonzales

Each month we highlight a certain item in Profoto’s rich assortment of Light Shaping Tools. (Previous articles can be found here.) This month we talk to Belgian photographer Jean Gonzales about an often-overlooked tool: the Hardbox.

As the name suggests, the Hardbox is the opposite of a softbox. In other words, the Hardbox creates a harder light with sharper shadows than any other Light Shaping Tool. Mount it onto your flash head or ProDaylight 200 to eliminate all stray light and create a pinpoint-sized light source that is as close to direct sunlight as you can come in a studio environment.

Antwerp-based fashion and portrait photographer Jean Gonzales is quite familiar with the Hardbox’s unique ability to emulate sunlight. It is also the main reason why it is one of his favorite tools to work with.

“I was browsing the web one day when I came across these gorgeous photographs shot in broad daylight in a desert outside of Los Angeles,” says Jean. “I instantly knew that this was something that I wanted to try myself, but we obviously don’t have that kind of weather here in Belgium, so I had to look for another solution. Pretty soon I came across the Hardbox.” (more…)

Thank you all for the overwhelming response to our call for Light Shaping Tool of the Month participants. It was not easy to choose, but in the end we went with an image created with the help of the often overlooked Hardbox. The image and the story will, of course, be posted on May 1.

For the record, we are still in search of photographers using the Fresnel Small, the Spot Small, the FresnelSpot, the ProFresnel Spot, the ZoomSpot, the MultiSpot, the StickLight, the StillLight and the StripLights. If you are sitting on an image worth sharing created with any of those tools, you are more than welcome to send it to fredrik.franzen[a]profoto.com

Have a great weekend!

For the last 16 months, we have interview one established photographer a month about the work he or she is doing with a certain Light Shaping Tool. Would you like to be the next?

If so, please send an image to fredrik.franzen[a]profoto.com and tell us what Light Shaping Tool you used to create it. The most inspiring submissions will be published here on our blog together with an interview with the photographer in question.

For your information, we are particularly interested in images that were shot with the Fresnel Small, the Spot Small, the FresnelSpot, the ProFresnel Spot, the ZoomSpot, the MultiSpot, the StickLight, the StillLight, the StripLights or any type of umbrella of softbox that we have not already covered in the Light Shaping Tool of the Month articles series.

Looking forward to seeing your images!

©Frasershot

Each month we highlight a certain item in Profoto’s rich assortment of Light Shaping Tools (if you want to browse through previous articles, click here). This month we talk to Craig Fraser at Frasershot Studios about his favorite bit of kit: the ProBox.

Northampton-based Frasershot Studios is a small team of photographers and videographers; each specialized in a certain niche of photography. Together they are capable of handling almost any assignment – editorial spreads, corporate portraits, architectural studies, etc.

Craig Fraser, the man who founded and gave name to the studio, manages food and product photography. But Craig does not shoot just any food. He has found himself a niche within a niche, shooting spectacular dishes prepared by celebrity chefs at Michelin starred restaurants.

“It’s lovely to work with such talented people,” says Craig. “The only downside is that you can hardly ever move anything on the plate. That would be like telling the chef to change his presentation. It’s a respect thing, really. They rightly consider their dishes to be pieces of art, so you just have to use lighting to the best of your knowledge and work around that.”

How do you do that?

“I think that regardless of what product you’re shooting, you have to take a closer look at what’s unique about it. What are its unique selling points, so to speak? Whatever that is, that’s what you should focus on. For instance, I recently used the ProBox to shoot a pair of shoes for a company called Crockett & Jones. These shoes cost approximately £500.00, and there are more than 200 different process involved in making just one of them. So the quality of the leather is key, and that’s what you want to show.”

How does the ProBox help you do that?

“You can’t just throw light all over the place. You have to be subtle and in absolute control of the highlights, and the ProBox is great for that. Unlike a softbox, where you have a large light source with a gradual fall-off and soft edges, the ProBox gives you a smaller, perfectly even edge-to-edge light with really sharp edges. I also like the fact that it’s so easy to work with. With the modeling light turned on, you can physically see the highlights change shape and intensity as you reposition and set your lights. It makes my job so much easier.” (more…)