Owning really expensive equipment can make you a versatile photographer with an edge over your peers. In my opinion, knowing how to use equipment creatively is a much more important skill.
Earlier this year, I was hired to shoot for Harper’s Bazaar in my studio. For the first few years of my career, I used strobe lights to create dynamic highlights and shadows. Now, I use continuous light for 99% of my photos because it suits my workflow better and because technology has increased dramatically over the past few years to provide better CRI and stronger light, as well as other elements that make them easier to use through lightning. Specifically, most of my footage is illuminated by my two 100-square-foot dummy windows powered by 20 4-foot 2,200-lumen LED bars that cost about $100 in total.
Here’s how to build that exact setup.
Why use fake Windows?
Check out this video about the inverse square law:
In short, the closer the light is to the subject, the faster the reduction of light. In addition, the proximity and size of the light source makes the light softer. Having a large light source, close to your subject will provide you with soft light with significant fading from highlights to shadows. My favorite modifier for that when I use strobe lights is my 185 cm umbrella. That should get you about 19 feet of surface area. I’ll take it out of the frame for a really soft, flattering light. But I decided to go bigger, so I made two 100-square-foot fake windows. Because they are windows, they can be in the frame and the subject can be directly across from them. So dummy windows allow you to expand further and get closer to your subject. I chose to use fake windows over real windows because I wanted consistency without having to rely on certain times of day and cooperative weather.
At my previous studio I had a dummy window frame, and I captured the flickering system though it, but you need the strobe frames at a certain distance behind the window to get uniform lighting. evenly, so this whole thing takes up too much space. With the LEDs, I was able to mount the light directly to the wall and the whole setup took up only about 5 inches of wall space.
How to build fake Windows
I bought these four-pin LED on Amazon on a Black Friday special for about $100 for all 20. They’re lightweight and produce almost no heat, though they do warm up with long-term use. They have adapters so you can link 10 of them together and turn them on with one plug. If you make more than 10 lights, you have to run two separate plugs. So I have 10 lights on one AC adapter and another 10 on a separate adapter. I plugged them into a smart plug that allows me to turn them on and off using Alexa.
Here’s how it looks when I’m building it:
Diffusion is very important
The upper beams are intended to create a deviation to hang the curtain. I attached a diffuser cloth to the front of the beam. There is a gap of about an inch between the lamp and the diffuser fabric. With only that single diffuser layer, you can still clearly see the light bars behind the fabric. To add another layer of diffusion, I took a 30-foot piece of chiffon and placed it in half over the curtain rod at the top, giving me two more layers of diffusion. I use a double curtain rod and hang the chiffon on the inner curtain rod, and I hang the drapes on the outer curtain.
Depending on your exposure settings, you may still be able to see bright lines if you shoot dark enough. I like the liberal look. If needed, you can use a Curves adjustment layer to reduce the brightest points of the light bars and increase the brightness in the gaps between the light bars to make it smooth.
Color temperature to receive
This photo above shows another version of the fake window I have that measures 10′ x 10′ and uses a very warm chandelier as the fill, opposite cool light coming through the window for tone. stunning right from the camera. This window uses 6,500K lights. The other window uses a warmer 4,000 K lamp because I place it against a cold-tone background and because I want to mimic the warmer morning or sunset light coming through the window. I also set the camera’s white balance to daylight as I find it gives me the best tones right from the camera in both windows.
How to shoot with fake Windows
I like to take reflection shots where the subject is standing in front of a window and I’m shooting against the light. It gives a soft glow around the contours of the body and face.
For example, in this photo, the background light of the large window creates a thin laser border down the face and outline of the entire body. Because I have such a large light source, I was able to use an extended pose with arms and legs extended to add length to the model and create a visual flow with the subject.
But the important thing is that when you shoot with constant light, what you see is what you get. You see a great photo and you take it. Using soft continuous light also allows me to shoot a lot of video content, which is a great plus.
