Mastering Challenging Lighting Conditions for Nightclub Style Photography

Lighting  •  Photography Tips

Commercial photographers are regularly faced with challenging lighting conditions and rigid deadlines. Meticulous planning and flexibility are required to capture just the look the client is after within the given time frame. When Nick Fancher was asked to create nightclub style images in the middle of the day, he made a seemingly impossible task look easy. Watch as he provides a behind-the-scenes look into a campaign shoot for Neon Nancy:

This type of shoot is technically difficult because of the time of day and the small amount of light given off by LEDs. Fancher had to black out the daylight streaming in from the nightclub’s windows. For some of the shots, he needed to use his flashes at their lowest power (1/64) and control the light by gridding the flashes and shooting them through umbrellas to recreate the feel of a club at night.

The photographer also faced the challenge of mixing his studio lighting equipment with the nightclub strobes. During the shoot, he made use of four Speedlites gelled with green, cyan, blue, and orange. His creative use of colored light, the house lights, and fog resulted in final images that look like they were taken in a lively nightclub after dark. Take a look at some of Fancher’s finished photographs along with his lighting setup diagrams:

Nick Fancher demonstrates what it takes to succeed in the world of commercial photography. Photographers must work quickly and systematically with unpredictable lighting scenarios and short turnarounds to give their clients exactly what they need.