Lighting

In the fall of 2010, Boston Magazine hired Teru Onishi, a talented jewelry, cosmetics, and liquids specialist, to shoot 25 different drinks in his Manhattan studio. The photos were to illustrate one of the magazine’s cocktail roundups–the image shown here is a whiskey smash. All had to be styled and shot in less than five hours, leaving about seven minutes for each drink.

Ryan Gibson, an editorial photographer from rural Georgia, specializes in athletic portraits. One of his favorite places to shoot? Locker rooms. “When I’m working on a feature story, I want to get as much variety as I can from a sitting,” he says. “After we do the field, stands, or courtside shots, I like working in the locker room. Depending on how I use my lights, I can get a lot of different looks there in a short amount of time.”

If you’re ever at the Manhattan terminal of the Staten Island Ferry in the evening, you can catch a great free light show whenever a ferry approaches the dock: What looks like hundreds of fireflies flashing all over the boat. It’s the tourists trying to photograph the Manhattan skyline with on-camera flash.

What happens when you cross an energetic toddler with a complicated lighting setup? You may get very cross yourself—unless you prelight, playing with and working out the lighting well before your model arrives.Chris Strong, a Chicago pro, spent a full day prelighting this portrait of his daughter, just as he does for his commercial assignments. “A prelight day comes into play when you’re working on a shoot that requires exacting light. You rough in your strobes to assure yourself that everything will go smoothly when real shooting starts,” he explains.