The "Professor of Precision" on Lighting to Attain In-Camera Perfection

Free Range Love
While teaching a master class in the Netherlands, Joseph Victor Stefanchik recruited one of his students’ clients to pose in front of a weathered tile wall at Zaanse Schans, a working windmill community. Using two Cheetah CL-360 lithium battery-powered flashes on 13-foot stands on either side of the couple, Stefanchik calls this a signature shot.

A pre-shoot walkthrough allowed Stefanchik to plan where he’d place his lights down to the height and exposure. “I sketch everything before I shoot using a livescribe pen that transmits back to my phone,” he says. “So when the time comes to be creative, I’m not worried about light or exposure; I get all those variables out of the way before I pick up a camera.”

Although he was happy with the image foul-free, when tourists began feeding local chickens, the animals couldn’t be contained. Stefanchik lay on the floor as a student threw cornmeal in front of him and chickens traipsed in front of his lens. “We call this a ‘photo Jesus moment’ because we only got one frame that worked like this,” he says.

LOCATION: Zaanse Schans, Netherlands CAMERA: Olympus OM-D EM-1 LENS: Olympus 25mm f/1.8 EXPOSURE: 1/250th at f/5.6 ISO: 400 POST: Alien Skin Exposure 7 BTS VIDEO

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True Blue Rio
Shot during a two-day wedding photography workshop in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Stefanchik’s goal was to show students how to manipulate daylight, and as the old artistic expression goes, make “something out of nothing.” Employing a local model to stand against a water-stained, gray wall in the shade, Stefanchik used one small speedlite on a boom arm (a 9-foot stand, with a 6-foot arm extended).

The speedlite had two important additions: full CTO tungsten gel and a grid on top of that. “I then set the camera to listen for tungsten, or in other words, the Kelvin was dialed to roughly 3200 degrees,” Stefanchik explains. “Because the camera sees the tungsten as the main light source, it cancels it out or keeps it neutral. Everything else that the camera doesn’t see—which is daylight—goes cool or blue because it’s on the opposite end of the spectrum; the shutter speed then controls the depth of blue.”

The only processing Stefanchik did was a light leak in order to achieve the pink bar using Alien Skin Exposure 7. “Back in the film days, some of us used to put a can opener on our film to induce the leak during capture,” he says. “I’m from the school where we did as much as we can in-camera; whenever I teach, I talk about working toward a ‘zero adjust raw file’—that’s my goal.”

LOCATION: A shaded wall in Rio de Janiero CAMERA: Canon 5D Mark III LENS: Canon 50mm f/1.2 EXPOSURE: 1/250th at f/4 ISO: 200 POST: Alien Skin Exposure 7

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House Organist
A portrait series for The Washington Post Magazine, Stefanchik’s assignment was to photograph key characters from the historic (and renovated) Howard Theatre in Washington, D.C. Jackie Hairston (above) served as the theater’s house organist. The Post wanted dynamic, black-and-white portraits, which called for a lot of light and Stefanchik’s medium-format Hasselblad. “You absolutely don’t need a Hasselblad to do this shot—the only reason I used that camera is to get the detail,” he says.

Lit with three V850 speedlites, on either side of the subject are 16-inch gridded softboxes to highlight his face (“Nearly everything I shoot is gridded,” he says “I want my light to be very precise.”). Rounding out the light, is a 16-inch silver beauty dish above the camera on a boom, also gridded. “I didn’t want the beauty dish to flash his tie, lapel or shoulders,” Stefanchik explains. “Below that is a silver tri-grip reflector from Lastolite.”

Keeping direction simple, Stefanchik shot from less than 2 feet from the subject, saying he does this setup all the time for editorial work. Another essential tool? “I don’t leave the house without a 6 x 6-foot velvet backdrop [a Scrim Jim] that Velcros to a 6-foot frame.”

LOCATION: Washington, D.C. CAMERA: Hasselblad H4D-40 LENS: Hasselblad 100mm f/2.2 EXPOSURE: 1/800th at f/8 ISO: 100 POST: Alien Skin Exposure 7

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