Start this one off simply by considering the creative possibilities of using one light for your photography. Whether in studio, at home or outdoors, just one light. Natural, strobe, tungsten, street light or whatever, just one light.

What can you do with it? Does this limit your creative options? Does it relegate your work to boring photographs?

NO, it doesn't. It challenges you to become a more creative photographer. It forces you to learn how to work with the light, to modify it and finesse it to express your creative vision. In many ways it makes decisions much more simple.

Think of the photographic works you really admire and plan on looking at at least five of your favorite images to check out the lighting the photographer used. These may run the gamut of complete studio setups with many lights to exquisite works lit with one light only. But, for now, concentrate on those that were lit with one light. One main light only, with fill and modification all coming from that one, single, solitary light.

Maybe something like the work of Ernst Haas, Edward Weston or Cartier- Bresson. (Yep, I pick on these guys again, why not, I like their work) Or try David Muench or Margaret Bourke White or Alfred Eisenstaedt. Not studio setups with many lights in the setup, but their one light images.

Haas, Muench and most nature shooters rely on one light for most of their images: the sun. The tremendous images all come from the one source, modified by clouds, haze, time of day, angle, reflections and modifiers of some sort. Modifiers such as bounce light from a cliff or a light colored jacket used to reflect some fill into a shadow. When you shoot nature you are at the mercy of the elements. Lucky for us that the sun & atmosphere so often combine to produce beauty and these photographers are astute enough to learn to work with it at its best.

But, it is still one light photography.

How about the early portrait and documentary photographers? Ever take a really close look at portraits from the 1800's? So many with excellent light, great modeling and apparent sharpness that seems greater than the old lenses & film could really deliver? The light does it for them. Even with films that are rotten by today's standards & photo gear most of us would throw away these early photographers got images that are hard for many to equal today.

A great many with only one light.

The secret is no secret at all. These photographers learned their craft. They learned the technique cold. They perfected their work habits and knew their materials, cameras and results. Most of them worked with one light, from the early portrait photographers to the best of today in nature & landscape photography.

Yes, working with more than one light can help, but for now, stick with the one light setup, whether natural or in studio. Try an experiment. Go to Kmart or something similar and get a quartz shop light, the 500 watt kind with a protective glass plate in front of the quartz tube & plan on experimenting a bit. Then pick up a square yard of window screen, a 30 to 40 inch piece of fome-cor and a roll of aluminum foil.

Now, plan on using these for a lighting session or two. A lot can be done with simple tools. And, in this case, Black & White film so we don't have color problems. Work with light, control and quality and we can introduce the distraction of colors later. For now, get ready to play a bit.

Take any object you want, from the proverbial egg, or tennis ball or baseball mitt or whatever. Try to keep from something with a highly reflective surface so you don't introduce too many variables at once.

Now, set up the light & your subject. Put it on the floor, or a table, or wherever. Put the light close or far away. Put the subject near a wall or farther away. It doesn't matter at all in the beginning because whatever you do, you will modify anyhow.

So, set it out & turn on the light and see how the shadows fall. See how the subject is modeled with the one light. Try it with the light straight on and then raise and lower the light. Then raise and lower the subject in relation to the light. Turn the subject this way and that. With an egg or baseball glove it makes more difference than with a tennis ball, but it does make a difference with the ball as well.

Now, take the screen and place it in front of the light & see how it changes on your subject. Put the screen in front of the light & then move it away. Double it & try again. Try it in front of half of the light. Try it with the light close and then far away. Try cutting a circle of screen & putting it in the way of the light falling on the subject & move it around like a dodging tool in the darkroom. Cut a hole & try it.

Congratulations, you have just worked with a scrim, a light modifier.

Now try the fome-cor off to one side. Close and then farther away. Try it just over the subject canted at various angles(just out of view of the camera) and see how the subject looks. Then put a strip of tin foil on it & watch the character of light change. Try the shiny side vs the duller side of the tin foil and contrast that with the bare fome-cor. If you are adventurous, try a piece of black fome-cor & play with subtractive lighting, but that is a whole world in itself & will come later with natural curiosity & experimentation.

If you move the subject closer & farther from a background the character, the 'feel' of the light changes a lot. It does so with use of these inexpensive light modifiers as well. All with one light and a few simple tools used to control that light, its angles, its harshness and its reflections.

Did you try pointing the light away from the subject and just using the fome-cor to bounce it on the subject?

One light photography isn't difficult, nature photographers and others have used it for a long time. Painters have done so as well. Everyone who would be creative with light has to learn to use it rather than point & pray for good results.

In photography, light is all you have. There is nothing else. If you don't learn to use it you will get some nice accidents but the real creativity will be lacking. You will be continually frustrated as you try for good results & too often fail. You will start to copy and get one technique that seems to work and then stagnate, failing to move on and improve.

But, learn to work with light and the whole world of photography is open to you. Learn to really use it, to recognize it and control it creatively(more than just a formula) and you will begin to understand the genius of a Muench, Adams, Haas, Eisenstaedt and so many others.

One or two excellent images can be luck, but a lifetime of them is talent, and talent is mainly hard work & knowledge.