Managing Natural Light by Lou Jacobs Jr.
Cathy Joseph’s Outdoor Lighting

This is a book review combined with a profile of the book’s author, Cathy Joseph of Wimbledon, England. The book is titled Outdoor Lighting: Fashion & Glamour, and it’s a neat collection of model images made by 25 photographers living in the U.S., the U.K., Sweden, Rumania, India, Canada, France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany. Cathy did a prodigious job of discovering how so many photographers manage daylight while they shoot glamorous women, and a few men, in a variety of settings. The 160-page, all-color book comes from AVA Publishing in Switzerland, and is distributed by Sterling Publishing Co. in New York City at $29.95.

	By Sammy Georges, St. Tropez, France.

Cathy’s path to writing books about photography started at London Uni-versity where her classical studies eventually segued her into a career in journalism. She became a feature writer for Camera Weekly magazine, aimed mainly at “keen amateur photographers,” she says. “I was thrown in at the deep end,” she continues, “writing stories about everything from underwater photography to interviews with celebrities about their pictures. I had learned a lot using a trusty Olympus Trip camera for years, but I probably exasperated some photographers as I struggled to get grips with technical terms they used. You learn pretty fast when you have to.”

When Camera Weekly was absorbed by Camera magazine, Cathy remained a feature writer with the new outfit. She explains, “Then about eight years followed as deputy features editor of a sister publication, Amateur Photographer, which has been running for more than 100 years and is the U.K.’s biggest selling weekly photo magazine. All during my time as editor and writer, most interesting for me was finding the stories behind the pictures taken by both top professionals and enthusiastic amateurs. And I continued to do the same for Outdoor Lighting and my other books.”

By Sam Short in Vancouver, Canada.

Cathy left Amateur Photographer in 1999 to freelance, and now writes for an assortment of publications. Her previous books deal with wedding photography, location portraits (twice), and the newest is Outdoor Lighting: Nudes. The AVA Guide to Outdoor Photography is scheduled for publication in October 2004.

Outdoor Lighting: Fashion and Glamour (OLF&G) was generated to inspire readers to explore the ways that natural light can be used to create many different effects, subtle and dramatic. “Fashion and glamour seemed a good area to kick off a series because readers see so many such images in magazines and advertising,” Cathy says, adding, “I feel there’s an air of mystique surrounding the fashion world that the pictures and text aim to reveal.”

	By Patrick Roddie at China Beach, San Francisco.

The seven chapters of OLF&G are a delight as they cover: planning; timing the shoot; creating a mood; the outdoor studio; shooting a fashion story; movement and light; and sun, sand and skin. Each two-page story features large, often full-page, photographs. Additional information covers the idea, location, composition, lighting and technique of featured images, plus a quote from the photographer. Each spread also includes a fact file about technical items. The layouts are appealing, and there’s a lot of variety in the photographs, from women in bikinis to large atmospheric portraits, action shots and moody photos. The book covers a large gamut of daylight effects, from dawn to dusk.

To find out what it was like drawing words and pictures from 25 men and women for OLF&G, I asked Cathy for some details:

Q: Please comment on the types and temperaments of photographers you’ve worked with.
A: In my experience, it’s impossible to stereotype photographers. In OLF&G there is a complete diversity of styles represented. Some photographers, like Farrokh Chothia, create stunning effects by combining flash with daylight, involving much planning and experience. Others like Patrick Roddie work in a very spontaneous way with just a 35mm camera handheld and a good model in wonderful light. Developing an individual style is one of the exciting challenges of photography. I think it can be a very positive thing to find inspiration in others’ work. There’s no purpose in copying, but even the most successful professionals are always learning and looking for ideas they can interpret in their own ways.

By Farrokh Chothia in Sri Lanka.

Q: Did you find photographers reti-cent to express themselves in words?
A: It can be very difficult working with photographers. Many are initially reluctant to talk about their work, and you have to coax information and opinions out of them. Some also worry about giving away their “secrets,” even though it may only be the type of filter used. Egos do come into it, although this often bears no relation to how successful the photographers are. I’ve also found many well known names to be charming to talk to and informative about their pictures. Usually, once a photographer understands that you are genuinely interested in theirwork and will represent it accurately, they are more forthcoming.

	By Jeff Navarro in El Mirage, CA

Q: How did you manage to gather all the words and pictures from widely scattered photographers?
A: Originally a picture researcher explored hundreds of images and sent them to me. I then made my selection according to the lighting and photographic areas I wanted to cover, and I talked to the photographers, often by email and on the phone. Sometimes they suggested additional pictures. So many people now have web sites that are a great way to get their work seen by a wider audience, and hopefully, used for books like this. Extracting information was very time-consuming, for one reason because the photographers come from all over and there were occasional language problems. But the level of helpfulness and patience of contributors, once we were acquainted, often amazed me.

Q: You mentioned that another of your books, Outdoor Lighting: Nudes has also been published by AVA. I’ve found many publishers in the U.S. cool to collections of nude photographs. Are attitudes different in Europe?
A: I think nude photography is probably more widely accepted in Europe than it is in the U.S., and the nude sequel to OLF&G has been very well received. On Amateur Photographer we used to produce annual supplements on both erotica and photographic calendars (from Pirelli and Unipart, etc.). They were among the best-selling issues of the year.

By David Anthony, Scarbourough Bluffs, Ontario, Canada.

Q: Many photographers aspire to have their work in coffee table type books. Could you talk a little about the trials of finding interested publishers?
A: Getting a coffee table book by a single photographer published is very difficult unless the photographers are already well known individuals. I think there is more of a market for instruction-type books with subjects of wide or specific appeal. I spend as much time as I can on those kind of book projects because they interest me and are very satisfying to do.

In the introduction to OLF&G Cathy makes these enlightening, cogent comments about fashion and photography:

	By John Owen in Miami, FL.

• Unless cleverly disguised with intricate backgrounds and props, fashion and glamour studios are not usually the kind of places dreams are made of, for all the convenience they offer. Most fashion and glamour photographers find the bulk of their work takes them out on location.

• Outdoor photography comes with its challenges. There is also more planning involved. Locations have to be found, travel arrangements made and so on. The photographer, models and the whole team which will often include a make-up artist, stylist, the client or art director and the photog-rapher’s assistants.

• There is no greater tool at the pho-tographer’s disposal than light from the sun. Shooting photos outdoors is often a time-consuming business because you may get hit by a freak thunderstorm, and you must frequently wait around for clouds to burn away. You hope against hope for a ray of light to shine through a dark grey sky, but when it all comes together, there is nothing more magical.

By David Anthony in New Orleans, LA.

• Using natural light in photography, just as in painting, is an art in itself, involving instinct, experience and skill. You know you’ve pulled it off when the viewer is hit between the eyes by the impact of a shot, without being at all aware of the tricks and skills to achieve it. This could be as subtle as the careful placing of a reflector, or waiting half an hour for shadows to grow longer.

A lot of ingenuity and effort by tal-ented photographers came together in Outdoor Lighting: Fashion & Glamour, and Cathy Joseph’s interviews reveal the ways and means photographers work on varied outdoor locations.

Lou Jacobs Jr. is the author of 25 how-to photography books, the latest of which, Photographer’s Lighting Handbook (Amherst Media) was recently published. He has taught at UCLA and Brooks, is a longtime member of ASMP, and enjoys shooting stock during his travels in the U.S. and abroad.