Using the studio and lighting set ups - WB 1,3

Health and Saftey in the studio:

“What health and safety law requires

The basis of British health and safety law is the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.

The Act sets out the general duties, which employers have towards employees and members of the public, and employees have to themselves and to each other.

These duties are qualified in the Act by the principle of ‘so far as is reasonably practicable’. In other words, an employer does not have to take measures to avoid or reduce the risk if they are technically impossible or if the time, trouble or cost of the measures would be grossly disproportionate to the risk.

What the law requires here is what good management and common sense would lead employers to do anyway: that is, to look at what the risks are and take sensible measures to tackle them.

The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 (the Management Regulations) generally make more explicit what employers are required to do to manage health and safety under the Health and Safety at Work Act. Like the Act, they apply to every work activity.

The main requirement on employers is to carry out a risk assessment. Employers with five or more employees need to record the significant findings of the risk assessment.

Risk assessment should be straightforward in a simple workplace such as a typical photographic studio or location. It should only be complicated if it deals with serious hazards such as those in a darkroom using chemicals.”

Risk Assessments

We all know that we need to do some form of risk assessment but what is involved in doing this. Why if we are freelance photographers should we consider doing one. For a start, if you have public liability insurance you can claim to being aware of any issues before they arise and you have some paper work that shows you where aware of any issues if something should happen. Apart from this it is good practice to do a risk assessment as it shows you clients, subjects and co-workers that you do care about providing a positive and safe working environment for everyone. The Health and Safety Executive has the following guide you should download and consider using: “Five steps to risk assessment “ on the HSE website or Five steps to risk assessment.

You can download the form only from here Photographers Risk Assessment

You need to follow these five steps, to not only be aware of risks but, also to do something about them.

1. Identify hazards.
2. Decide who might be harmed and how.
3. Evaluate the risks and decide on precautions.
4. Record your findings and implement them.
5. Review your assessment and update if necessary.

Working on Location. The Health and Safety Executive has a useful guide in Buildings used for locations or temporary studios in film and television. That covers things like working in buildings, control measures, fire, responsibilities, hazards, Utilites, Vermin, hazardous materials, rubbish and debris to name a few of the details it goes into.

In the guide it refers to ‘must’ as being a legal obligation and words like ‘do’ should’ as advice on good practice. I would recommend that you download this guide from the link below as it is an in-depth look at things you should consider when working on location.

See link below for a form, that will help in checking the location for any health and safety issues that you may encounter. (which is also in the guide from the listed here). Health and Safety Executive, Buildings used for locations or temporary studios in film and television on the HSE website or Buildings used for locations or temporary studios in film and television or download the modified one that I have created based on the one for television. Here: Location photography Health and Safety

One area that photographers need to consider is the possibility of people tripping or slipping over.

“Slip and Trip Hazards Control measures

In order to effectively control slip and trip risks, employers should:

• Identify the hazards – look for slip and trip hazards around the location or photo studio.
• Decide who might be harmed and how – look at who comes onto the location or photo studio, and whether they are at risk.
• Consider the risks and decide if precautions already being taken are enough, or if more needs to be done.
• Record the findings.
• Review the assessment regularly and revise it if necessary.

Location or photo studio premises are varied and often complex sites. The measures to control the risks will vary according to the different areas of the location or photo studio and the different activities being undertaken. Each will need to be assessed separately and a range of practical measures adopted to control the risk depending on the assessment. The risk factors to consider include:

• Environmental (floor, steps, slopes etc).
• Contamination (water, food, litter etc).
• Organisational (task, safety culture etc).
• Footwear (for example, footwear worn for photographic sessions may not always be in line with sensible shoes for work).
• Individual factors (eg information and training, 
supervision, pedestrian behaviour etc).”

The points above have been modified for the photographic studio and come from: Health and Safety Executive. Preventing slip and trip incidents in the education sector on the HSE website or Preventing slip and trip incidents in the education sector.

Studio Task

Today we went into the studio to set up lighting for some images ready for us to start using the 5x4 camera. At first we was going for a bright white evenly exposed background, we were using 4 lights 2 at the background one with a beauty dish and another with bowl reflector. The front lights one with a snoot and another with soft box. Background lights want to be f64 and the front lights wanted to be f22 which will be two stops lower than the back.

Using the light meter we can get an accurate measurement of the amount of light hitting the subject/background . To do this you connect the sync lead up to the light and have it attached to the light meter. Set the light meter up for the right mode for this particular exercise it will be the symbol of the flash with a little c. Set the ISO to 100 and set the shutter speed for the speed you want, you then trigger the flash with it pointing towards the light in front of your subject. This will give you the reading of what your f number will be.

We incurred a problem as the lights wouldn't get up to f64 the highest the back lights went up to was f22, this accident actually worked out ok as the overall image had a beautiful soft balanced contrast. The background went from grey fading into white. Not having the background just as a white or a grey and mixing them up it creates a more atmospheric feel towards the image.

Handheld light meters have three important functions: 

1. They read light being reflected from a subject.
2. They read the light falling on a scene or subject, that is, the incident light.
3. They read the light from an electronic flash.

Flash Mode

Most handheld meters also function as a flash meter. This is extremely valuable in the studio and on location when you are using one or more flash units. The meter is able to detect the brief burst of light, and it will give you a perfect exposure. All the insecurity of flash exposure is gone. Notice in the photos below that the lighting on the model’s face is different. In the first shot I used only one light while in the second I used a main and a fill, and yet the meter in flash mode produced perfect results in both types of light. If you want to do multiple pops from strobe units, a flash meter can evaluate the accumulated bursts of light to determine the correct lens aperture.

 

When you’re using flash mode, you push a button on the meter and then fire your flash within the next 60 seconds. The meter measures the flash, and its LCD tells you what your camera settings should be. It’s that easy. You can take both incident and reflected readings of a flash, but I have always found the incident readings to be flawless and have always used that method.

Flash mode works beautifully on location as well. When I was in Venice, I did a lot of off-camera flash work, such as in the image below, and the balance between the flash and the ambient light was perfect. When I shot famine figures in Dublin, Ireland, the meter was unaffected by the background darkness. It read the flash perfectly in incident mode.

http://www.sekonic.com/whatisyourspecialty/photographer/articles/how-to-use-a-handheld-meter.aspx on 25.11.2015