In Lighting 102, we have learned some of the basic physical controls that we can apply to light: angle, distance, size, restriction.
We've also learned how to identify and control the zones of light that fall onto our subjects: diffused highlight, specular highlight, diffused shadow, diffused highlight to shadow transfer.
But there is another control lever that is more complex, more powerful and more evocative than all of the ones listed above.... more
Restricting light is a powerful control. By taking light away, we can evoke character or drama or mystery or any number of other things. My friend Joe McNally goes as far as to distill it down to this:Read more
Let's jump off this train for a minute and think about our different lighting controls in context with each other. More specifically, let's look at size and distance.Read more
We have all had to deal with specular highlights, even if we did not know what they were called.
Think about portraits of people you have made in direct sunlight. Remember that glaring spot on their face or forehead? That was the specular highlight of the sun. And if the person was sweating or had oily skin it only made matters worse, as that... more
When you light any three-dimensional object, you create four zones of light. It doesn't matter if it is a face or a tomato. So today let's learn from this tomato, photographed by Strobist reader Kenneth... more
So what is it that actually makes a light soft? And why is it a function of both size and distance?
In the portrait above, Dean is being bathed in soft umbrella light from camera right. But let's zoom in a little closer and place some waypoints on his forehead...... more
This is Gary. Gary is a snail. And he's beautifully lit by my friend Sara Lando. While babysitting Gary for a friend, Sara decided to actually build a miniature set and then photograph the snail in the style of Irving Penn. Because this is what creative people do in their spare time.
By using a second light to ensure legibility in the shadows, we can place a "floor" on how low the tones will go on our subject. But we can also combine this with the fast falloff of a closely placed key light to get total control of a subject with an inherently tough dynamic range.... more
For this layer of control, we are going to look at two different pictures. Everything will be the same except for one thing: The distance from our light to our subject will change. Nothing else. In particular, the subject-to-background distance will not change.
Any kind of light is a must for photography. You just cannot photograph without light. There are various types of light that no doubt you are familiar with:
Natural light from the sun
Ambient light (could be natural or manmade)
Artificial light such as strobes, incandescent or tungsten, fluorescent, flash and LED lights
Infrared light
This article will give you tips for using two LED lights to achieve moody portraits.
