Category: Studio Lighting

4th Assignment at GCC

10/15/2025

Here is my 4th photo assignment for my advanced lighting class at GCC! The assignment was to create a portrait of a model with a cleanly lit white backdrop using only 3 lights. As you will see in the BTS photo, my model has 1 strobe with a softbox attachment to light her & a white card to add some fill in the shadows. You can't see the lights in the BTS photo, but the background is lit with 2 strobes firing into 2 white v-flats, which then reflected light onto the seamless backdrop, creating a consistent & clean white backdrop.

Shoutout to my model, Kas, for being such a good sport & also for being so photogenic. Isn't she gorgeous?

The second part of the assignment, which was harder than it looked, was to photograph a silhouette portrait with no light spill or wraparound from the background lights falling onto the model at all, with a white backdrop. This was harder to accomplish than I thought it would be! I thought it would be as simple as just turning off the light on the model, but it wasn't. When I first attempted the silhouette with Kas, I could not figure out how her silhouette was still getting light on her, even if it was very faint. The assignment required the silhouette to be flat black with no light whatsoever.

After spending 4 hours setting up the lights & photographing in the studio, I needed to pack up & try again later. I sent my instructor the silhouette photos I was able to create with Kas & asked for feedback, told him what I tried, & asked what else I could try? He recommended backing the model & camera further away from the backdrop & zooming my lens out all the way. Well... I had another go & this did the trick! I knew from the beginning I wanted to experiment with sheer fabric to see how it would react to the light on silhouette, & it totally gave the effect I wanted it to. I'm so glad I decided to give it another try!

For these photos, we practiced on different lights that were more powerful than the Paul C. Buff strobes we'd been using in the previous assignments — the Norman D24 strobes.

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3rd Assignment at GCC

10/15/2025

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Here is my 3rd photo assignment I created for my advanced lighting class at Glendale Community College! The assignment was to light a reflective object, so I chose a handheld mirror & placed a little Sugar Pill lipstick on top as an extra prop & burst of color to add a little contrast to the photo.

Wow, I struggled with this one a lot. I know it looks like a very simple composition, but the class is heavily focused on the technical & the requirement was to get a gradient in your reflective object, not just flat white all the way through. It took me 2 hours to figure out how to light this, so that there was a gradient in the mirror. I legit wanted to cry, hahaha! But glad I was eventually able to figure it out.

I received positive feedback from my instructor on the composition, color choices as well as being able to accomplish the gradient in the mirror. Apparently, what could have made it easier was to either change the angle of my camera so that it was higher, or to tilt the mirror somehow. However, he was happy that I stuck with this composition & made it work — even if it was a challenge & took a while to figure out.

I forgot to take a BTS photo of my setup! But I used 1 Paul C. Buff strobe with a grid attachment to light the background (which is what created the gradation in the mirror), & one strobe with a softbox attachment above & slightly to the left of my camera, just for a little fill on the objects.

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2nd Assignment at GCC

9/28/2025

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CLICK ANY IMAGE TO ENLARGE.

💥 Been having a great time practicing strobes in my advanced lighting class at Glendale Community College!

This assignment was highly technical & there's nothing conceptual about the objects I chose at all. This exercise allowed us to practice lighting glass. The lighting diagram shows my process & the last photo shows the very elaborate setup in real life, haha. A lot went into ensuring the glass was lit all around without glares from the strobes. I used 2 Paul C Buff strobes (1 with a grid attached & one with a soft box attached) along with 3 white fill cards.

What do you all think? Did I nail it or nah? Let me know in the comments!

I don't know what I am planning to do with these new skills, but I am considering taking the commercial photography class next. The more I learn in this class, the more pissed off I am that I wasted years & thousands of dollars in art school to not learn any practical skills in photography, or the diverse jobs all available within photography alone. All they taught us was how to write and talk about our work, express ourselves, & read stacks of theory, haha. There was very little focus on the technical & I am annoyed that I'm only learning things like how to light glass after nearly 20 years of doing photography. But, I'm happy I'm learning now & we'll see where this can take me.

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1st Assignment at GCC

9/23/2025

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Some of you know, I’ve been taking a studio lighting class this fall! I got an undergraduate degree in photography & I took studio lighting 14 years ago, but retained none of the info, haha! Aside from an occasional on-camera flash, I never use lighting in my work. I wanted to see how much tech has changed since then, & the class has been a good refresher on how to use strobes. I appreciate how technical the class is, unlike the studio lighting class I took in art school, which was too focused on the conceptual. The instructor is also a photographer I worked with at my last job, & he encouraged me to take it. :)

This was for our first assignment. The assignment was to create a still life set & light it to photograph texture, using only one strobe & any mods. I used a Paul C. Buff strobe with a fill card. The setup & exposure can use some work, but I’m happy with the practice I’ve been getting in this class. The environment in community college feels way more supportive than it did in art school, & I feel much more motivated to try & give it my best.

We are required to keep lighting diagrams of our assignments. So here's a peak at what my lighting setup looked like! Like I said, it's not perfect & it still needs some work, but I am learning & practicing.

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4th Assignment at GCC

3rd Assignment at GCC

2nd Assignment at GCC

1st Assignment at GCC

NICA AQUINO

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