Knowing Light. Lighting set-ups (IV)

Missed part III? read it  here.

Let's continue with more light set-ups.

Rim Lighting. If the Key light is placed behind the subject only the outline will be illuminated leaving the subject in shadow. It is used to create silhouettes and express a sense of mystery and intrigue in a very artistic way. You can choose to soften the effect by placing a Fill light or a reflector in font of the subject. Rim lighting is very often used in conjunctions with more lights because it helps to separate the subjects from the background and to highlight hair.

Back lighting. When the rim lighting is not that extreme we have a light set-up which is especially used for translucent objects like bottles and glasses. The key light is normally doubled: two lights of equal power are placed on both side of the subject. You can either choose to light directly the subject or bounce the light with a white background. In both cases you have to be careful with light spills: to prevent this you need to use flags and lens hood.

High key lighting. This set-up is characterized for very bright mid tones, intentionally blown highlights and very few shadows. The key light is positioned on one side of the subject at 45º, while the fill light in the opposite side at the same degree. The background has to be white and illuminated by two background lights of the same power.

All these lighting set-ups are really variations of the triangle set-up we seen in this post. These are the basis but you have to feel free to add or remove lights, change positions, directing the subject towards one light or another and move around: you'll see how light and its effects change by doing so. This is the best way of learning to master light: practise and experiment.

Know light. Use of natural light indoor

If you are shooting indoor you do not always need  artificial light to expose your pictures: you can do a magnificent job using just available natural light. You just need a room with a window and sun light, of course.  You could use the window as a back (or rim) light to create a silhouette of your subject or you can move around and use it as side light: depending on if you expose for the mid-tones or the brighter side of the subjects, you'll get different results.

A reflector or a white board might be very helpful: it's perfect to bounce and soften the light to create a more delicate mood or to fill up shadows; but be careful with the kind of white you are using! some materials, for its composition or the way they have been washed, produce ultraviolet light, resulting in a blue cast in the image. Depending on where the reflector is positioned it will create a different atmosphere. If it is held in a higher position, imitating the sun,  the look will be very natural, if it is held down bouncing up the light, it will create a more artistic effect.

I prefer using north light when shooting indoor because it's softer and I don't have to deal with heavy deep shadows; however there are situations when direct sunlight is more suitable: when you want to play with high contrast or with shadows of the window drawn on the subject, for example.

As always, the key of photographing indoor with natural light is to stay creative: you have to move around, not only to get the best composition, but to see how the characteristics of light change; you have to play with light and shadow, stay alert and take advantage of opportunities: a single ray of light passing through a window slightly ajar it's enough to shoot a stunning image.

Know Light. Colour temperature. What it is and how to use it.

Why do my photos sometimes have an horrible blue or orange cast? What does that K stand for on my digital camera? If you are asking  these questions you probably should want to know about Colour Temperature. So let's get to it!

Light is an electro-magnetic radiation which carries energy; one of it characteristic is frequency which is translated by our brain in colour. Different frequencies produce different colours. The higher the frequency is, the higher the energy and bluer the colour. Colour temperature is the scale on which this energy is measured and unit measure is the Kelvin degree (K). The colour temperature depends on the heating temperature of a metallic incandescent light, from red, which needs the lowest temperature, through the orange, white and up to blue (highest temperature).

Normal daylight has a temperature of 5500K and we associate it with white light; a lower temperature energy measures, for example, 2000K so the light will be red; on the other hand if the temperature of the energy goes higher than 5500K, the light will turn blue. 

This is what you need to remember in spite of the confusion common terminology may cause by referring to red or orange light as warm and to blue light as cold (because it is not related to the temperature but to the psychological effect of the colours).

Why should you know this? to avoid a colour cast when taking picture in certain conditions. If you are using a daylight balance film or the sunny setting in a digital camera you will be correctly shooting  coloured images at 5500K, typical of a midday sunlight or a flash. If the colour temperature rises (or lowers) and you not balance accordingly, your images will have a blue cast (or a orange one): when taking pictures during an overcast day, for instance, your images will turn out with a bluish tone; when taking pictures inside a house or a restaurant they will be reddish. 

To avoid this you need to white balance your camera, if you are shooting digital, by changing the setting accordingly (from the sunny setting to the cloud one, for example), or manually choosing the colour temperature in kelvin degrees, or as well doing a personalized white balance photographing a white paper or using an expo-disc. If you are a film camera user using a daylight balanced film, you can remove the colour cast by using filters: 81 and 85 series will remove blue tones, 82 and 85 series will remove orange tones.

But you do not always want to remove a colour tone. One of the function of the light, and in my opinion the most important, is to create a mood to enhance the message of the image: would you correct the orange and red tones in a picture of a sunset ? Therefore you can create a warm and familiar feeling by adding orange tones, while blue cast is related to feelings of cold and distance. The use of psychological effects of the colours is another very interesting theme which we will discuss in next posts. stay tuned!

How I did it. Artistic nude colour portrait. A light diagram

When I made this portrait I had in mind some Flemish paintings in which the light is just on the subject, leaving the surroundings in almost complete darkness creating a strong sense of mystery. I had no doubts on how to position lights, but the problem was that I wanted this portrait to look like a painting. With a digital camera I would have add some kind of texture in the editing. but how could I do it with a film camera?

Kodak Portra 400 f4 t1/250

The picture was taken on Kodak Portra 400 with a medium Format camera which was positioned in front of the model at her height. I chose a 80mm lens because I wanted the proportions to be as natural as possible. I used just a key light on the right side of the camera, almost at one side of the model and slightly tilted down. By this I would have manage to recreate the atmosphere I was looking for and, by using just one light, I also achieved the "sfumato" I was after.

I also added a background light: it's on the left side and pointing far away from the framed background so that just the fall-off would enter the picture. By that I added depth to the image, thus maintaining my sfumato. I corrected the background light with a blue filter  to add contrast with the orange tones of the model's skin.

To create the painting look I knew that using a shallow depth of field would have helped me. Shooting at f2.8 would have been a bit too much, so I set the aperture at f4. The 500w flash was at 1/4 of its power  and the shutter speed was at t1/250 but the exposure metering was not the one I wanted. 

I could have changed the shutter speed at t1/500 (I can do that with my camera without flash sync problems) but I would have only gained one stop: I needed more. So I used a 0,6 ND, a neutral density filter which stops down 2 diaphragms.

To add e sense of ethereal and help with the sfumato I left the model slightly out of focus (soft focus). But I need a certain texture and this time grains would not have been sufficient. I decided to do this with the development of the film. I used C-41 colour processing and I under developed the negative which made the blacks softer, added a particular grain structure which works really well as texture but also added some colour shift in the blacks which, after all, also helps to the purpose, don't you think so?

How I did it. Black and white artistic nude photography. A light diagram

Artistic nude photography is one of my favourite kind of photography and something I really enjoy taking on black and white film. Here is a picture I made some time ago and the diagram of lights I used.

TMax400 - f8 - t1/125

This picture was taken on a Kodak TMax 400 with a Medium Format camera. The model was quite small as well as the space. in order to enhance her height I used a 50mm lens (which is an angular lens in MF) and positioned the camera really close to her right knee and played with perspective. The position of the legs and the right arm helped to my purpose, conferring to the whole image a certain dynamism.

As you can see in the diagram below, I used a three point light setting. The Key Light was a 1000w flash with square softbox on camera right, slightly tilted down at 1/2 power. I flagged it to avoid light spells on the background.

On the left of the camera I put a 500w flash also with softbox, the Fill light, at 1/4 of the power and more distant from the model than the Key light in order to fill up the shadows on the legs but at the same time to achieve the contrast I wanted. It was also flagged to prevent the light to fall on the background and more areas of the body other than the legs.

I placed the Background light behind the model, at 1/2 the power and with a snoot, which created   the circle of light at her back.

I used a yellow filter Y8 to get a brighter skin tone and shot at f8 and t1/125.

I like film grain very much and normally I want them to gain presence in the print, so control it with agitation during the development of the negative.

The image was then scanned and went trough Photoshop only to place the watermark and to reduce it to web size.

Hope you enjoyed this post, now it's time to practise!