Golden Hour by Brent McCombs
A week ago someone asked how to achieve the dramatic chiaroscuro look here: https://www.reddit.com/r/LightLurking/comments/1vm4g5j/some_help_please/
I stumbled upon this picture from way back in 2016 while browsing some photography forums. Thought you would like it. Here’s what the photographer said regarding it..
Light - that was lucky. When the building was scouted, the light was fantastic, but on shoot day, as I note above - mostly dim and cloudy - we worked with that vibe while we had it (you have to make whatever you get work), but when it changed, one of the only real 'skillful' things I brought to the shoot was noticing it changing and insisting we move immediately to try and snag the moment.
Otherwise, what I brought to this was an okay sense of composition (the composition isn't great here because I was compromising to bring the upper windows into the shot and had maybe 20-30 seconds to see/evaluate/adjust... and I'm not THAT fast.
And the other thing was just some basic knowledge of light and how to work my camera.
That's stuff you can learn fast - like less than a week/2 weeks fast. Getting really comfortable may take 2-3 months. But by summer, you could easily have all the skill I needed here to make this shot. The rest is investment in hiring awesome creatives, finding really talented people to work with, doing workshops that put this stuff together for you or finding clients willing to foot the bill for shoots like this. I have literally done it all four ways, and at the end of the day, it doesn't matter as long as you push the button, the image is yours. If you read the light and made the composition, you did your job.
So take time and learn light. It's fairly easy - start with learning the Sunny 16 rule if you don't know it yet. Then learn to eyeball all the other general levels of light with shutter speed. There is a light-meter ap for your cell phone that costs under $10 and does a really good job at reading light - buy that and just whenever you see cool light, try and guess what your camera settings would need to be to make a shot - then meter it, you'll learn it quite fast that way.
Next, learn to mix strobe and ambient. It's just about placement and balance. Work in 1/16th 1/8th 1/4 1/2 and full levels on a hotshoe flash fired remotely through a cheapy travel softbox (that's all this is, on a monopod held up a bit high).
Photography is not rocket science. It just looks like it when you're not really comfortable/clear on the processes of getting there. But almost anyone can do this.
He also mentioned there was incense burning or that the place was just dusty and that’s helped with a haze effect.
