Techniques for Photographing Historic Figures: Lincoln

Photography Tips

We’re going back in history a bit today. Jay P. Morgan of The Slanted Lens takes us on location at Gettysburg to photograph Lincoln. He uses a couple different strobes, some props, and smoke to really capture authentic looking photographs of Lincoln up on Little Round Top, kneeling at the rock wall where Chamberlain’s troops would have been at the Battle of Gettysburg. Here’s his process to photograph this historic figure:

Camera Setup

On the camera left-hand side, there’s a Dynalite Baja B4 with a medium softbox in it. The softbox is silver lined to give a nice punch.

At first, Morgan starts with a grid, but decides to take it off to open up the light a bit.

Morgan then adds a Baja B6 strobe with an umbrella behind the camera to open up the scene even more.

Creating the Scene

Morgan exposes for the ambient light in the trees in the background as the sun goes down. He slowly lengthens the shutter to keep the ambient exposure matching the strobes that he’s controlling with the aperture up front, balancing the two to get a nice shot.

To add to the scene even more, Morgan’s crew adds smoke to the background using smoke grenades. In post, he adds some sun rays coming through the trees to give a hint of light direction and round the image out.

All in all, the day turned out to be a success. Morgan was able to get some great shots of his Lincoln model that look historically authentic and really portray the feeling and atmosphere of such an important time.