Light tips. How to light a subject with pronounced chin

Every subject is different and has different characteristics, that's why we have to light every subject with different light: lighting is a powerful tool to hide or enhance features in a portrait. Here are some tips about how to light a subject with pronounced chin.

Do not use a strong Key Light: it will produce strong shadows enhancing the size of the chin.

Do not use side Rim Light: it will highlight the chin.

Do not use wide angle lenses: it will distort the relative proportion making the chin look even bigger.

Do use a low Key Light: the lower the Key light the less the chin will produce shadows. Shadows are subconsciously linked to object's size, that's why we have to minimize them if we don't want something to look big. For the same reason placing the Key Light frontal will help.

Do shadow the area: if it is possible, let the chin to fall into shadows to hide it. Another solution may be softening the light on the chin.

Hope you find it useful! Stay tuned for more lighting tips!

Light tips. How to light a subject with a narrow face.

Every subject is different and has different characteristics, that's why we have to light every subject with different light: lighting is a powerful tool to hide or enhance features in a portrait. Here are some tips about how to light a subject with narrow face.

Do not use a high Key Light: placing the light too high will narrow the face even more.

Do use a broad Key Light: remember, a broad key light widens while a narrow key light slims.

Do lower the contrast of light: so the narrow face won't look as narrow as it really is.

Hope you find it useful! Stay tuned for more lighting tips!

Light tips. How to light a subject with large nose.

Every subject is different and has different characteristics, that's why we have to light every subject with different light: lighting is a powerful tool to hide or enhance features in a portrait. Here are some tips about how to light a subject with large nose.

Do not use a harsh Key Light: it will creates deep shadows and make the nose look larger.  Also, avoid emphasizing the shadow of the nose for the same reason.

Do not use a wide angle lens close to the subject: a wide angle lens changes the relative size of the objects so, the closer you'll get to the subject the larger the nose will appear. Use a telephoto lens instead to control and reduce proportions.

Do use a frontal Key Light: it will minimize shadows; but avoid placing it high.

Do use the camera at a low angle: it will change the perspective and the nose will not appear as large. If it is not possible, frame the whole head in the shot and tell the subject to tilt the head up a bit: you will get the same effect.

Hope you find it useful! Stay tuned for more lighting tips!

Light tips. How to light a subject with a wrinkled face.

Every subject is different and has different characteristics, that's why we have to light every subject with different light: lighting is a powerful tool to hide or enhance features in a portrait. Here are some tips about how to light a subject with a wrinkled face.

Do not use a harsh Key Light: it will produce deep strong shadows and intensify wrinkles.

Do not use Back Light on one side: a side light enhances textures: placing a back light on one side of the subject will emphasize wrinkles.

Do use a frontal Key Light: a light placed in front of the subject will reduce textures. Avoid placing it too high or you will have the same negative effect of a side light. Place it low instead.

Do use soft low Fill Light: it will fill up the shadows of the wrinkles created by the Key Light. Lowering the contrast will also help to mask wrinkles.

Hope you find it useful! Stay tuned for more lighting tips!

Light tips. How to light a subject with deep-set eyes.

Every subject is different and has different characteristics, that's why we have to light every subject with different light: lighting is a powerful tool to hide or enhance features in a portrait. Here are some tips about how to light a subject with deep-set eyes.

Do not use a harsh Key Light:  a harsh light will produce heavy deep shadows that will intensify the deepness.

Do not use a wide angle lens close to the subject: it increases distance between objects changing the apparent relationship between them, so the deep-set eyes would appear more sunken then they are.

Do use a low soft Fill Light: placing a Fill Light lower than the eyes will brightening them up eliminating the shadows. You could also use a reflector to bounce light up, as well as lowering the Key Light; and remember, softer the light, softer the shadows.

Do place the camera at lower angles: this will change the perspective, making the back-set eyes less perceptible.

Hope you find it useful! Stay tuned for more lighting tips!

Light Tip. Preventing power surge damage. How to turn the lights on.

Are you going to light a scene? Remember that when you turn the light on, the electric intensity goes up around 20% than the normal (i.e.: when light is normally on). For example, let's say you have 3 Tungsten lamps of 1000w each and the maximum power your installation can offer is 3300w. Which is fine because you only need 3000w in total: you still have enough watts to connect your PC and a battery charger.

But, if you add that 20% extra lights need to be turned on, you'll find yourself that you are exceeding the maximum power by 300w:

3 x 1000w = 3000w

20% of 3000w = 600w  

3000w + 600w = 3600w > 3300w

In order to protect your equipment (or the one you are renting) you should always turn the lights on one by one, leaving enough room for the light to get that 20% extra of energy needed.

Now that lights are on, start shooting!

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.

How I did it. Outdoor black and white Fashion shooting

When we were preparing this fashion shooting, there was one thing my Art Director, Gemma, and I had clear in mind: contrast. So we decided to develop the entire shooting around it. Models, locations, dresses, attitude... everything should reveal the idea of contrast. Once again I chose a Medium Format analogue camera because, apart from being my favourite photographic format, it was the perfect combination with the idea we developed.

Tmaxx 400, ƒ11 t1/125

Two elegant ladies in the countryside, in a filthy and decaying place far from the town where they can freely love themselves in a less platonic way. It's around 1920, as the hair style suggests; the ladies could be an aristocratic woman and her servant... This is, briefly, the story we told trough the shooting. I wanted the images to remind the feel of that time, that's way I shot analogue and that's why I used black and white film.

I chose the film I am most comfortable with, Tmax 400 and a 80mm lens on a medium format camera to respect the naturalism of the whole idea. I used just two lights for the shooting; well, actually three lights if we count the light of the overcast day we had which played as ambient light.

The key light was positioned behind the models, at camera right: it was a naked flash so the light would have scattered all over the place imitating the sun. In front of the models, on camera left, I placed the fill light: a huge octagonal softbox 150cm wide which provided soft and diffused light wrapping the models and able to illuminate both of them. I placed it on one side because the shadows it produced on the blonde model's face were very suitable for her physiognomy.

I used a Y8 filter to whiten the blond model's skin and to accentuate the contrast of the scene. Even if I love grain, this time I controlled the agitation during the negative development because I looked for the fine grain the Tmax offers and played with the time of the process to enhance the contrast.

You can see the whole shooting in my web or in Stravagance Magazine.

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!

Knowing Light. Natural light. How to use it in photography

Natural light is the most powerful and highest quality light we have to photograph yet it is the less controllable. It is normally divided into good light and bad light; this division is normally made by bad or inexpert photographers. There`s no such thing as bad light: light is always good, it's up to you to make the best use of it. Light has two functions: making possible the chemical or electronic process of recording an image on a film or a digital sensor and, which is most important, creating a mood to communicate something. So we should talk about adequate or not adequate light (for example, don't shoot a very romantic scene at noon in summer).

As the sun moves throughout the day the light changes its characteristics as its qualities depends on more factors: the quality of the air, the presence of clouds, the pollution and the soil. The early morning offers a very good bright light because the air is neat and clear, there`s lot of contrast and pronounced shadows. The afternoon light is similar but the air is not that clean so light isn't as bright as it is in the morning. As the sunset is approaching the light will turn in a very short period of time from white to pinky end then to a varieties of orange and red tones. This is the golden light. 

First minutes of sunset (Kodak Portra)

On the other side of the sun the sky will be deep blue and when the sun disappear the blue tone of the light will take over. You have to bear this in mind if you are a film camera user or you are photographing a subject lit from the orange tones of the dusking sun on one side and the blue cast of the sky from the opposite. 

Last minutes of sunset (KodalPortra)

At midday the sun is at its highest point: the colours are more saturated, the skin tone is brighter and shadows are very visible and defined (think about the ugly shadow below the nose or the eyes). Solutions? The sun will be always positioned in the south (in the northern hemisphere) so it is as easy as changing the relative positions with it, for example having the model with the back at the sun if you are doing portraits. Of course you could fill the shadows with artificial light like a flash, or bouncing the light into the subject with a reflector. Another solution would be finding some shadows and positioning there the model thus the image will result flat and less dramatic. 

Same subject at sunrise (KodakPortra)

It is the same situation of an overcast day: the clouds are like a huge soft-box, diffusing  light, lowering contrast, flatting  colours but eliminating shadows and enhancing details. But natural light is not the one which comes directly from the sun, it can be reflected from the sky for example. This is what they call the north light (or the south light, depending on in which part of the globe you are reading this blog), a soft and delicate shadow free light.   

Land can work as a reflector too: think of the snow in a mountain or the wet sand of a beach in low tide.   

Other things to remember when shooting with natural light are haze and rain. The first one  makes lines and forms fade out; you need a skyline filter or polarize to get rid of it or, if you are shooting on black and white, a yellow filter. The rain will help with the saturation: it clears the atmosphere so, after raining, colours will look brighter.

You now have all what you need to master natural light so go out there and start practising!

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?