[john sharaf] "...is an evolutionary process over your entire career. you'll find that you'll get bored with a certain look and will want to try different approaches..."
Truer words never spoken. I look at my own lighting styles through the years and find they were
very evolutionary. Not revolutionary, just evolutionary. Not necessarily better... just different... and I think that's just as John says, I got bored with doing things such-and-such a way and tried something else and stuck with it for a while.
I used to be big into softboxes, and would wag a bunch around me wherever I went. Sometimes I would just take umbrellas, if I knew they would be fine in a situation and I didn't have to worry about spill or much control. Lately (last couple of years), I've been on my daylight kick, and have tended to use HMIs and bounce cards a lot more, often times in places that don't
require daylight balanced light and where in the past I would have used tungsten just fine. And different people have different tastes. For example, with HMIs I'm the
only person I know who greatly prefers fresnels over PARs. Everyone else is in love with their PARs but I hate using them. Give me the frez any day.
What's next for me? I dunno... but it might be LEDs. I haven't used any much, and think they would be interesting to try. Whatever it is, it probably won't be like the last thing I did. Or the thing after that.
One thing that
doesn't change much is all the grip equipment... C-stands, flags, grip heads, Quaker clamps, junior stands... all that jazz. Seems the only thing that really changes are the instrument heads themselves. So I tell people just starting out to be sure to invest in good grip stuff as well, because those pieces are fairly timeless and useful no matter what your lighting style.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
