The ONE as a key light

If you follow Aakaash’s work, you know how delicate he can be when using artificial light. The cinematic imagery he can pull out from his work is thrilling, and when he brings the Elinchrom ONE to the set, it adds this little something to make the story happen.

Aakaash recently experimented with the Elinchrom ONE on a simple setup to work with limited gear. The challenge was to use the ONE as a key light in various compositions he worked on. With a simple and ingenious configuration, check out what Aakaash could produce.

After almost two years of being in a creative rut, trying to figure out the world, and limited production, I had the opportunity to use the Elinchrom ONE on a simple, dark collection of still artwork called “White Lies”.

The series spans three images, two of which are solely lit with the ONE.
The third image, “End of the Line”, was lit with the ELB 500 TTL and the ONE combination, both of which paired flawlessly. The ONE has made me love the magic of one light all over again.

For the first two images, “Night School” and “You Said You’d Never Leave”, the ONE was powerful enough to be a key light and light enough to setup and breakdown quickly.

We used one Rotalux Strip Softbox with the ONE for one image and two with a standard Grid Reflector 18cm (7″) and gel for the other image. Whether on its own or in a group, we were thrilled with how the ONE handled our workflow.

I see the ONE as being the perfect accessory light. It’s small and powerful enough to carry as a key light when heavy equipment is not possible, but it also holds it’s own against other Elinchrom lights in a kit. The naturally soft, even fall off of the light with the diffusion dome responds really well to gels and is polished enough to be used on its own as a bare-bulb setup.

I intend to use the ONE as a set prop in the future. The simple shape of the body makes it easy to costume as well!

As I spend most of my time shooting on location, this light has made the process just a bit of fun, and I think fun is the key.