[more pics at the end]

…and getting caught up. And I even got my studio set up in my basement now and was able to do some test shoots. Yay! i had always said, “I’m a natural light photographer”. And believed that nothing is better than ‘natural’ light. but then as I got more involved in photography, that changed.
i love learning about photography so much, about all aspects of it, that i couldn’t exclude learning about studio lighting. and, with that, there is a WHOLE other world of photography opened up. things that you can’t do in natural light – *POW* – so awesome in a controlled environment. it challenges you creatively in an entirely different way. in his book, “The Moment It Clicks”* Joe Mcnally quotes, W. Eugene Smith:

“When I was in school, I wanted to be W. Eugene Smith. He was a legendary staffer at Life, a consummate photojournalist, and an architect of the photo essay. He was also kinda crazy. That was obvious when he came to lecture at Syracuse University and put a glass of milk and a glass of vodka on the lectern. Both were gone at the end of the talk. He was taking questions and I was in the front row, hanging on every word.

Mr. Smith, is the only good light available light?” came the question.
He leaned into the microphone. “Yes,” he baritoned, and paused.
A shudder ran through all of us. That was it! No more flash! God’s light or nothing!
But then he leaned back into the mic, “By that, I mean, any &*%%@$ light that’s available.”
Point taken.”

— Joe McNally (The Moment It Clicks: Photography secrets from one of the world’s top shooters)

I think that says it all. When you really enjoy photography, you want to ‘get’ the shot, anyway you can. Natural, on-camera flash, studio lights, the trick is just to learn how to do it best, with whatever lighting situation you’re faced with.

*I sat down and ‘read’ this entire book one day last April [’09] at Indigo, Eaton Centre. It is SO good, that I bought it ~ and flip through it regularly.