Focus On Lighting Photos Focus on the Fundamentals.pdf

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Background light Different backgrounds have an impact on the final style of the portrait. While most photographers stock various shades of seamless paper, they may only have one or two painted canvas backgrounds as they are considerably more expensive. Regardless of the background, by using a backlight, we can effectively control how dark or light a background is. Up to this point, we’ve used either black seamless or black velvet. For the photo to the left, we changed to a painted canvas background. A great many styles are available, or you can paint your own. This one had fairly dark tones. We wanted a more midtone background. There are two ways to brighten a background. The first is to move the background closer to the subject. Immediately, the lights we are using for the subject will also brighten the background because it is closer. If subject and background are too close, we can get shadows on the background cast by the sitter. Although this can work on occasion, we generally don’t want this effect. We can sometimes eliminate these distracting shadows by raising our main light so that the shadows will be cast at an angle where they hopefully will fall behind the sitter unseen by the camera. An easier way is to use a background light. Place a flash on a short light stand (or on some boxes) behind the sitter and point it at the background. Use a silver reflector and barn doors for more control. The reflector will make our little light bigger, and the barn doors will restrict the light so it falls off at the edges of our image. If we place them correctly, we will see the background lighter behind the sitter and then darker at the edges. In the image on the previous page, we’ve got four lights at work: main (key), fill, hair, and background (with four barn doors to restrict the spread of the light). This technique is doable with three lights and the sun, but it is still more than the simple lighting (two lights) we are mostly concerned with in this book. Something for future consideration. feminine versus mascuLine In the photos on pages 111, 112, and 113, our model is in the male pose. The body is turned toward the main light. The head is turned back to the camera and is in line with the spine. In the photo on page 114, our model is in the female pose. The body is turned away from the main light. The head is turned back toward the main light and tilted a little bit, creating sort of an S-shape. Women can do both male and female poses. Men should stick with the male pose. Men tend to look somewhat silly when their heads are tilted as in the female pose. So, Where Do We Put This Light for Portraits? 115
Rim lighting/kicker Rim lighting is used to separate the subject from the background. Unlike a back (or background) light, where the light is pointed at the background, in rim lighting the light is pointed at the subject. It is placed so just a bit of light outlines the subject. The portrait below uses two off-camera flashes. The first was placed in a softbox at camera left and about 45 degrees above the subject. Because of its placement to the side of the subject, we get 116 <strong>Focus</strong> <strong>On</strong> <strong>Lighting</strong> <strong>Photos</strong> split lighting as we described earlier, but because the light was bigger and there were light walls, the contrast is less than as shown earlier. The second flash was placed slightly behind the sitter and acts as a rim light; it provides the separation needed for the shoulder and hair from the background. Kicker lighting is what we used in the photo at the beginning of the chapter with the Civil War reenactors. Basically, a kicker is a light that comes from the side, often to give a bit of extra brightness or definition. This example presents a stronger version of kicker lighting than is commonly used. We wanted a sense of light coming from a bonfire and thus used a large softbox to the camera-left side of our subjects (their right) with a full CTO gel in front of it. We had a second light in a small softbox just to the right of the camera with a dark blue gel over it, quite high up and angled a bit downward toward the subjects. The photo on the next page shows the image as shot. We had planned to use our smoke machine for this image, but it unexpectedly would not work. Without time to have it repaired, we let our models go home after getting the basic shot; then we photographed cigarette smoke separately and put it into the image with postproduction work in <strong>Photos</strong>hop. This situation offers a good lesson—one way or the other, the photographer has to get the job done! Two lights, two gels, and a little software magic was all that we needed. Although we used two off-camera flashes in softboxes, it could have been done with a single off-camera flash with diffusion material and a CTO gel at the side and then blue gel over the built-in flash. The blue light would not be positioned as high
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Focus On</
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Focus On</
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Dedication To Polly Frye, who tirel
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Contents 127 The wrinkle 128 Eyegla
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oating publications including Chesa
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Robin Reid: Trained as a classical
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learn to work with simple, dumb lig
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Chapter 1: There’s More Than <str
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Built-in flash Shot with built-in f
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Modifier 1: A mirror Having the fla
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Modifier 2: A big white reflector I
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Other modifiers: Fill light, hair l
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Same principle: We can control the
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how many pictures shouLd i shoot? G
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Later, turn on all the automation y
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can also get anything in between: a
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24 Focus O
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We all want the most intelligent ca
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28 the sake of rapid, accurate move
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30 can be to buy one expensive trig
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The size of the light The size of t
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We need to know about this defect t
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36 Focus O
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needs to consider buying one of wha
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Softbox Softboxes are boxes with di
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Diffusion The other way to make a l
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For this book, the translucent whit
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gobo to block some of that light. (
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48 Focus O
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A commercially produced wooden cook
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any glue—all of which we already
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54 We can use the grid for many pur
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56 A grid solves the problem: We ha
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Lens filters Most lens filters chan
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in Our daily lives, we go through v
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The colors of sunrise and sunset ca
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Page 84 and 85: What happens when we go in the oppo
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Page 88 and 89: Using gels for dramatic color In th
Page 90 and 91: The photo above was done by placing
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Page 95 and 96: Small lights make hard shadows. Fur
Page 97 and 98: Compare the gourd on page 81 with t
Page 99 and 100: We could solve the exposure problem
Page 101 and 102: Why does the same light look so dif
Page 103 and 104: We had to shoot the cover shot of t
Page 106 and 107: sunlight is great, and not just bec
Page 108 and 109: looks like a painting. We were too
Page 110 and 111: convert the image to black and whit
Page 112 and 113: Amending or mixing light So what do
Page 114 and 115: penetrate.) But what if we don’t
Page 116 and 117: The sky was gray. In this case, the
Page 118 and 119: Distance and haze Haze happens for
Page 120: The photo above was taken in early
Page 123 and 124: Regardless of which lighting style
Page 125 and 126: postproduction work to deepen the s
Page 127 and 128: Broad lighting Broad lighting is pr
Page 129: like to place it so that it lights
Page 133 and 134: Butterfly/Beauty lighting Butterfly
Page 135 and 136: Low key versus high key lighting Bo
Page 137 and 138: We blocked the popup flash so none
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Page 141 and 142: 126 Light meters Do we need light m
Page 143 and 144: Eyeglasses and lighting: Can they g
Page 145 and 146: In the photo on page 128, we’ve g
Page 149 and 150: When photographing large groups, wh
Page 151 and 152: way they can get an image of the da
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Page 157 and 158: Direct reflection means that the li
Page 159 and 160: Flat metal The image below was lit
Page 161 and 162: we went ahead and put back the refl
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Page 168 and 169: Position the camera so the viewfind
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Page 172 and 173: A glass half full Interesting thing
Page 174 and 175: Bottle lit with off-camera flash th
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166 Focus
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A homemade flash trigger. We make o
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These photos are of a pianist known
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This picture uses two external flas
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the principles Of light remain the
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it is silly to spend hours to perfe
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all likelihood do some selective re
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Glossary this is an introductory bo
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photographer’s perspective from b
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Dodge: To lighten a portion of an i
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Had we had camera histogram display
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mirror reflector, often attached to
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minds, return to the original file,
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Index Page numbers followed by f in
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Lens hood, 99 Light amending or mix
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Sun light, (Continued) sunrise and
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