Basic Ligthing

Practical use of the technical assets from the DIY lights guide.

Preface This tiny little article sheds a light (ha, ha...) on the practical aspects of using lights for photographic purposes. Objective is to learn choosing the appropriate lighting for your subject regarding material and idea. Hardware and technical aspects are detailed in the DIY lighting guide. This article might spawn questions on your side. I cannot guarantee answers, and from a certain level or in professional consultations I might eventually need to charge for my time. But asking is for free in first place. If you speak German, you may ask in the German newsgroup news:de.rec.fotografie and copy the message to my e-mail account (michael@photoquack.de) marked "posted and mailed". I write there on a regular basis, and public answers save me from writing duplicate answers.

Lighting basics Light is defined by two main aspects: Light quantity and light quality (How many and which kind?) Intensity and positioning of the lamps Lamp (flash) power: People often claim not to have enough light. Cheap excuse. If your subject doesn't move and you have a tripod, you don't need more light. It may be better if the light comes from a different direction or is more diffused or more directed, but when you are able to see your subject, you can take pictures of it. When the shutter speed is too long for handheld shooting because of possible or guaranteed shake, use a tripod. A nicely exposed piece of film is childrens game. Wether you have your lamp 100 feet away from your subject or burn it from close range onto the subject, by setting smart combinations of aperture and shutter speed you can achieve proper exposure. Understand, what aperture and shutter speed do, and you have learned the biggest part. It is not the amount of light, it is the way you use it. (Does that sound familiar? ) Okay, light quantity (power) is rather not mission critical. It is more the light quality, the characteristics of lightforming accessories that matter.

Main light What is "main light"? Well, the light that dominates the picture, that generates highlights and shadows. The sun is a prfect example for a main light. But the main light in a picture can also be the reflector of a studio flash or a small battery powered hot shoe mounted flash. Probably the most important decision about setting up a picture is where to place the main light. Do you want the sun to shine over your own shoulder or over the model's shoulder? Is it better to sit your model in front of the window or next to it? Put the flash on camera or buy an extension cable for remote flash? Simple answer.: Everything goes. Every case is different, there is no absolute wrong or right. If you like the result, you've made the right decision, if you don't like it, call it art. The secret is to see the *light*. See what is illuminated and what is not. If you don't like what you see, change the lamp positions. Or change the position of your subject relative to the lamps. Do you want one half of the face black? Or do you want light flat as a pancake? Do you want the eyes to be black holes? If not, rearrange the lights! Look how shadows change with changed lamp positions and adjust your position according to what you see. Forget about the little buttons on your camera for a minute. Look at the light, what is illuminated and what not, and in which style? Light is *the* tool of the creative photographer. Paint with light and shadows where it suits your needs.

How many lights? Okay, the million dollar question: How many lights did God make? (Or Russ Meyer or Jello Biafra, or....) One, the sun, right. Or not. Russ also made the sky and the ground, reflecting and diffusing sunlight. We call that reflectors, fill lights, diffusers. If there was nothing to reflect light, everything not being hit by direct light would be jet black. Like seen on the moon. Or on NASA pictures, if you haven't been there yet.

Reflectors / Fill lights The light that shows the shadow side and fills it with life. In photography every light not creating shadows (or creating merely visible shadows) is a fill light. The most simplistic way to avoid shadows is to place the fill as close as possible to the optical axis. All lights cast shadows, regardless of their size and where they are. Positioning the fill close to the optical axis and a little above it, nearly all shadows it generates are hidden behind the subject and thus not visible for the camera. Positioning the camera to the side often results in cross shadows, a common beginners mistake. Another means of lightening up shadows is a reflector. Some photographers use large white cardboard panels, styrofoam boards or flexible dedicated reflectors. As a rule of thumb, position the reflector in a way that enables it to reflect some of the main light onto the dark side, the shadows of your subject. To understand the principle, try that with a mirror. Reflectors are matte and more diffuse in comparison to a mirror. The mirror is not very useful as a means of contrast control, but you can see the effect very good. Next million dollar question: How much light do you want? How much fill? How close to your subject do you want it? Simple answer: Everything goes as long as you like the result.

Lighting contrast How many fills/reflectors to use? How do you want the ratio of main light to fill? Do you want the fill to be as much as the main light (1:1)? Or do you want the fill to be just half of the main light (2:1)? Again, up to you. An even, flat lighting is mostly perceived as "soft", because shadows are not too deep and quite gentle, high contrasts with strong shadows on the other side are perceived as "hard" lighting. High contrast pictures with little or no fill often look very dramatic. If you want dramatic images, use few or no fill lights and reflectors. You all know the covers of fashion magazines, the majority uses soft lighting with little shadows. But you also all know some of those dramatic, high contrast portraits that show so much more substance. Try this: If you are not sure what you really want, pick a few fashion magazines or magazines in general, browse through them and pick a few images you really like. Try to find out how they were lit. Is the lighting high contrast or low contrast? Lamps close to the camera or far to the side? Maybe even backlight? Are both sides of a portrait lit or just half of the face? Shadows with hard or smooth edges? Look into the eyes of portraits or into reflecting parts of still, lamps usually reflect into both, which allows you to detect which setup was used. Once you found out how the images were lit you can try to duplicate that for your own images. Try variations, and write down what you did for later reference. Understand what light does to your image, and use it accordingly.

Other lights Yes, there are other lights. There are hair lights, background lights, contour lights, splash lights and Russ knows what else. Don't be too worried about that, you have plenty of time to worry later. You can shoot perfect people shots with just one main light and a fill light. Or just with a main light.

Light quality Reflector size. And yet another million dollar question: A light reflected and diffused over a large panel, or a simple battery powered flash? Say nothing, would be wrong anyway. The answer depends on what you want the picture to look like. The main difference between a hot shoe mounted flash and one bounced off a reflector or into an umbrella is its relative size. The bigger the illuminated area, the softer the shadows. If you want max structure, and hard edged shadows, use a small point light and place it off axis. If you want soft shadows that smoothly dissolve into the lit parts use a large light and place it close to the optical axis. Try this experiment: Take off the reflector of a desk lamp, leave just the bare bulb. A clear bulb works best. Stand between lamp and wall and try with your hands to make ducks (shadows) fly over the wall. Now put the reflector back on and try again. With the reflector back on, the light source is larger, your ducks will be more blurred. The ducks ....er, shadows under the nose of your model behave the same. Most people don't like to find hard edged shadows under their noses. That is the reason why so many photographers use large lightformers or umbrellas for people shots. Large lightformers mean soft edged shadows, but not necessary flat lighting. Put a large softbox to the side or even slightly behind your subject, and you will receive strong shadows regardless of the lightformer size like in the sample below. Put a small point light close to the optical axis, and you will receive very few but hard edged shadows. Look into the face in the sample below: It is lit with a follow spot very close to the optical axis, hard light, but few shadows in her face.

Color

Another aspect of light quality, with a lot of influence on the result. If you shoot negative film, it is not too critical, up to some extent you can correct that in printing. Too much correction on the other hand doesn't leave too much quality, and when you shoot transparencies, the result is incorrectable. Better to shoot it right in first place. Transparencies have some advantage, though: You can play around with color without the fear that your lab might filter that out in printing. Correction filters used in shooting or different moods of light over the day can have dramatic influence on the image. I'll explain that in the next world.

Or in a few weeks. (Bribe me!)