I'll get you yet, Mike Hammer!
copyright 2007 Keith Loh
This is one of my submissions to the newest Strobist assignment: film noir. Ever since I shaved my head I've been in my friend's movies as a heavy. When I walk the streets people look at me sizing me up. I guess I was made to be an antagonist. Anyone who knows me knows I couldn't intimidate a puppy. Ah well, it works for the camera.

The Strobist
What is a Strobist assignment? First things first. The Strobist is a blog run by photojournalist David Hobby of the Baltimore Sun extolling the virtues of the off-camera flash and any kind of light and easy to transport kit that helps you get great shots with artificial lighting, namely portable flashes or "strobes". Through his blog and very active Flickr group he and the rapidly growing community of Strobists have done a lot for teaching photographers that you don't need a huge bank of lights or even a studio space to get good shots. My previous photo shoot with Jhayne owes a lot to the information I've gleaned from that group (as well as from the much-recommended textbook: Light: Science and Magic).

Although in many ways the Strobist group hums along by itself David Hobby does have a curriculum of sorts by giving out monthly assignments exploring a new aspect of lighting. That brings me back to the shot above.

Film Noir lighting
The newest Strobist assignment is to use bare flashes and create harsh shadows and high contrast like the old film noir movies such as "The Maltese Falcon", "The Big Sleep". The distinctive look of these films was developed in a large part by a host of German directors who fled Europe before the rise of Nazism and came to roost in Hollywood. In Europe directors like Fritz Lang began the look of these films in the German Expressionism school. Lang's "M", "Metropolis" all made creative use of shadows, silhouette and bare lighting.

Fritz Lang's "M"

The look of these films suffused throughout Hollywood especially in B pictures where the dramatic contrast fit well with the hard boiled conflicts played out on screen. Making creative use of shadows also hid low budgets, studio shoots over expensive and complex location shots. When violent gangster and detective flicks began to be censored, the studios transferred their resources to horror films where many of the same directors made the same creative choices to create the classic look of "Frankenstein", "The Mummy", etc. Recently, Frank Miller's "Sin City" in graphic novels and in the overly faithful movie adaptation by Robert Rodriguez is a good example of film noir composition where silhouettes and rim lighting give the audience enough cues.

I'll get you yet, Mike Hammer!
In my Mike Hammer shot above I used the most obvious light forming shape I had available to me: the blinds in my apartment. Fortunately, I live on the ground floor so I was able to take my Sunpak outside on a stand, open the window, draw the blinds to the right spacing and create the trademark film noir shadows in the background.

After I had that set I spent a good two hours then having fun with the harsh foreground lighting on my face and on the knife. Often we are told not to light from the ground up because it gives one a sinister look. Here, I have no problem with creating the big shadows in my face, making me harsh and angular. That is because: Mike Hammer, I'm gonna get you.

My greater issue is how to avoid spilling light onto the background and wrecking that nice blind shadow. I do this by using a snoot. A snoot, as the name implies, is any funnel-shaped object you can place of your flash that constricts the light spilling out and sends it in a more or less straight direction. In my case I had created one out of a Pringles container which I found fit snugly over my Canon 430ex Speedlight. By constraining the light, I ensure that only my face and whatever is close to it is hit by the light. Positioned correctly, no light spills out around me to contaminate the background.

In the shot above I wanted to add a shadow. To do this I needed a larger light source than the snooted flash (though I still wanted my face all lit up and contrasty). So I added a third flash, again bare, no diffusion, this time aimed at my body and positioned a bit farther away. The shadow falls in the direction the flash is pointed at.

My final submission to the assignment was to add Sarah. I used the same set up as the first shot but positioned the snoot a bit further back so that its light would catch both of us.

Some Old School Glamour
copyright 2007 Keith Loh

On men you don't need to do much post-processing especially if the only subject is the villain - me. But for women you want a softer, more diffused look and also glowing skin -- a more flattering look. So for the shot below I went through a few steps in Photoshop to make it more of a glamour shot. At the time I didn't think of adding a stocking filter or other diffused filter to my Carl Zeiss 20mm so I did it all in Photoshop.

Old school glamour look in Photoshop:

1. Duplicate the background and bring into a work layer
2. Gaussian blur either the whole layer or just a selection of your chosen subject. Set the blur to taste.
3. You can either change the opacity of this work layer to taste or you can go to the Edit menu -> and select Fade Gaussian Blur to taste. In this one I chose 40%.
4. Next sharpen it using the Unsharp Mask feature in Filters -> Sharpen -> Unsharp Mask. Again do it to taste.

Voila! Old school glamour shot without switching to diffuse filters or softboxing.

You may notice that I don't mention the black and white rendition technique. I'll save that for another post.