Mark Seliger On a Shoot with Lenny Kravitz (And His Lighting Trick) [RF Video of the Week]

Those of you who went to WPPI last year know that Mark Seliger, who was the keynote speaker, is one of the greatest contemporary masters of celebrity portrait photography. We featured him and his enviable work last February, including the perfectly haunting shot of Kurt Cobain and the off-the-wall, pigeon-filled portrait of John Malkovich.

Part of what draws people in to Seliger’s work—beyond his interesting subjects—is his beautiful lighting, and luckily for the curious, constantly self-improving photographer, he’s given a peek at how he does his thing (and the “trick” to his lighting approach) during a shoot with long-time rocker Lenny Kravitz.

While Seliger admits he doesn’t always use only one light, he still strives for the appearance of a single light source in his portraits. At one point during the shoot, he photographed Kravitz next to a flood of available window light with a ring light on his camera, yet the photos looked like they were shot at night with a single flash.

The pinnacle moment of the shoot came when he set Kravitz against a dark background and shot him with a simple softbox setup. “If you can walk away with one image that you’re clearly excited about,” Seliger says in the video, “then you’ve done your job.”

Check out more Videos of the Week, and email Libby Peterson with submissions.

Related Links

How Matthew Jordan Smith Shot a Portrait of Tyra Banks That Will Never Go Out of Style

Platon’s Portrait Session with Edward Snowden, the “Most Wanted Man in the World”

Portrait Photographer Rémi Chapeaublanc’s “Gods & Beasts”