My lighting history part 2

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After graduating college, going into the Coast Guard, I had a full time job and time to work on being a photographer.  My next step was to get a set of studio lights.  I was a frequent visitor to Anderson's Camera and had my eyes set on a Norman P250 four light unit.  I knew very little about strobe lighting so everything was by the seat of my pants. It wasn't a very powerful unit but it was workable.


These were the type of flashheads that I used.  The modeling lamps were actually vacuum cleaner bulbs (25 watts) which made for very weak modeling lights. 

I also had access to space at the University where I could set up the unit and there was background paper.  BUT, I didn't have a flash meter yet.  Trying to decipher watt seconds, BCPS, reflector variables etc was a challenge.  It was a lot of guess work and somehow I was able to take educated guesses on exposures as one really didn't know if the exposure was correct until the film was processed.  Since umbrellas were the most economical light modifiers to have soft light, that's what I used.


Around 1976, I left my job and was able to attend the Hawaii version of West Coast School of Professional Photography.  The instructors for that session were Victor Avila, & Leon Kennamer.  It was because of these instructors that I started to fully understand professional lighting techniques.  I purchased my first monolight and Larson reflectors and started to practice with it.  I would always analyze what I did after a photo session so I could try and figure out how to do it better.  It was the blind leading the blind for several years after that.  I was getting decent photos because I knew the principles of lighting.  Never fully understood it.

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