Focus On Lighting Photos Focus on the Fundamentals.pdf

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Later, turn on all the automation you please. It’s good stuff for efficient working, even if it’s not good for efficient learning. Some of the best photographers in the world use the most highly automated systems, but most first learned with dumb equipment. But enough philosophy already. In the Sikh’s picture, we needed to put the white reflector in a specific spot to get the result we wanted. After all, if we put it in the wrong spot, it wouldn’t have reflected the light from the builtin flash in the camera. By getting the main light off the camera, we can put it absolutely anywhere we want. In the photo on page 16, our main light is at camera right, and that’s a big advantage. What do we need to use as the main light? We certainly get the biggest bang for the buck if we use the sun. It’s free, it’s powerful, and it’s available for at least a few hours a day almost anywhere in the world. We even have a certain amount of control over it. Want it to come from a different direction? Choose a different time of day or use a silver reflector to change its direction. Want it to be softer? Choose a day with some cloud cover. Photographers like all of these advantages, and that’s why many pictures use sunlight as the main light. Still, we don’t have good control over the sun. What if we need to shoot exactly now and the sun is not in the right place? What if we want a softer light, but there is no cloud cover? What if we live in a climate where there is almost never any cloud cover? <strong>On</strong>e way or another, experienced photographers often overcome these problems, but if we’re not already experienced, these difficulties will hinder our learning. It will take us a lot longer to become the experienced photographers who can deal with the problems. In fact, the complications may prevent us from ever gaining that experience at all. So that’s the problem. What’s the solution? Life is short, and we want to learn as quickly as possible. After buying whatever camera we can afford, with whatever lens we can afford, the next step is buying whatever flash we can afford. Which flash do we want? This is the hardest decision we have to make! In the long run, buying a dedicated flash built to work with our camera is probably the best decision. But right now, while we are still learning, that could be the worst decision. Why? First of all, it’s likely to be an expensive decision. When we buy the dedicated flash, we’re paying for the work of a lot of very smart engineers who made that flash to work with our camera. That’s okay; they earned it. But those same shamefully prideful engineers sometimes build equipment that makes it impossible to operate in a fully manual mode, and we want full control! So look carefully at the options available for the camera’s dedicated flash. If it, along with “Whatever we can afford.” Having the right equipment matters more than having the best equipment. There’s More Than <strong>On</strong>e Way to Get Things Done 17
the camera, offers fully manual control, we want it, and we’ll be wise to spend the extra cash for the little brain in the flash. We’d like to use those automatic options later. But if we can’t totally control the flash with our own hands and brains, we don’t want it right now. Instead, we’ll buy a dumb flash, probably with a lot more power for a lot less money. Maybe later we’ll buy the intelligent flash and save ourselves some work, or maybe we’ll stay with the dumb flash but buy more of them. Either way, it needs to be our decision and not the decision of engineers. Right now, we’ll use a small light. We could skip the expense and do the same thing with the sun, but for now we want to talk about your light source. First, we’ll assume you’ve bought a small light to increase control. If you haven’t done that, you can still use the sun. Let’s look at the photo on page 16 again. We already know it’s a good photo. How did we get there? The photo at right is essentially the same photo, but it sure doesn’t look the same. Why not? Well, for a start, we’ve taken one 18 <strong>Focus</strong> <strong>On</strong> <strong>Lighting</strong> <strong>Photos</strong> of the most beautiful women we’ve ever seen and turned her into a hag. Pretty women have smooth skin, but look at the skin texture in this picture. It’s rough and wrinkled, even though she’s very young. That’s not her fault; it’s ours. What did we do wrong? The whole problem is the size of our light. Small lights make hard shadows; big lights make soft shadows. It’s as simple as that. Neither is inherently better than the other, but we have to think about which we want and make that decision again for each picture. If we’ve bought a small Old women and old men are beautiful, too! We’ll get to that soon. flash, we already have a small light. So getting the hard shadow is easy. Now we have to turn that small light into a big one. <strong>On</strong>ce we learn how to obtain both, we
Page 2 and 3: Focus On</
Page 4 and 5: Focus On</
Page 6: Dedication To Polly Frye, who tirel
Page 9 and 10: Contents 127 The wrinkle 128 Eyegla
Page 11 and 12: oating publications including Chesa
Page 13 and 14: Robin Reid: Trained as a classical
Page 15 and 16: learn to work with simple, dumb lig
Page 18 and 19: Chapter 1: There’s More Than <str
Page 20 and 21: Built-in flash Shot with built-in f
Page 22 and 23: Modifier 1: A mirror Having the fla
Page 24 and 25: Modifier 2: A big white reflector I
Page 26 and 27: Other modifiers: Fill light, hair l
Page 28 and 29: Same principle: We can control the
Page 30 and 31: how many pictures shouLd i shoot? G
Page 34 and 35: can also get anything in between: a
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Page 39 and 40: 24 Focus O
Page 41 and 42: We all want the most intelligent ca
Page 43 and 44: 28 the sake of rapid, accurate move
Page 45 and 46: 30 can be to buy one expensive trig
Page 47 and 48: The size of the light The size of t
Page 49 and 50: We need to know about this defect t
Page 53 and 54: needs to consider buying one of wha
Page 55 and 56: Softbox Softboxes are boxes with di
Page 57 and 58: Diffusion The other way to make a l
Page 59 and 60: For this book, the translucent whit
Page 61 and 62: gobo to block some of that light. (
Page 65 and 66: A commercially produced wooden cook
Page 67 and 68: any glue—all of which we already
Page 69 and 70: 54 We can use the grid for many pur
Page 71 and 72: 56 A grid solves the problem: We ha
Page 73 and 74: Lens filters Most lens filters chan
Page 76 and 77: in Our daily lives, we go through v
Page 78 and 79: The colors of sunrise and sunset ca
Page 80 and 81: Early evening. The sun is lower in
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space. The sunlit side will be both
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What happens when we go in the oppo
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setting in this open shade lighting
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Using gels for dramatic color In th
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The photo above was done by placing
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This page intentionally left blank
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Small lights make hard shadows. Fur
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Compare the gourd on page 81 with t
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We could solve the exposure problem
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Why does the same light look so dif
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We had to shoot the cover shot of t
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sunlight is great, and not just bec
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looks like a painting. We were too
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convert the image to black and whit
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Amending or mixing light So what do
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penetrate.) But what if we don’t
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The sky was gray. In this case, the
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Distance and haze Haze happens for
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The photo above was taken in early
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Regardless of which lighting style
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postproduction work to deepen the s
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Broad lighting Broad lighting is pr
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like to place it so that it lights
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Rim lighting/kicker Rim lighting is
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Butterfly/Beauty lighting Butterfly
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Low key versus high key lighting Bo
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We blocked the popup flash so none
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124 Focus
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126 Light meters Do we need light m
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Eyeglasses and lighting: Can they g
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In the photo on page 128, we’ve g
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132 Focus
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When photographing large groups, wh
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way they can get an image of the da
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est-behaved pets rarely sit as stil
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140 Focus
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Direct reflection means that the li
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Flat metal The image below was lit
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we went ahead and put back the refl
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148 Focus
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glass is generally considered hard
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Position the camera so the viewfind
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we could have hung them with string
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A glass half full Interesting thing
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Bottle lit with off-camera flash th
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it reflected in the bottle. In this
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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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