Day 11: Lighting

ISO: 200

SS: 1/400

f/5.6

Reading Notes (Option 1)

    There are three primary forms of lighting your subject. The first is the most common and the easiest to work with, called frontlighting. In my last two images I have used the frontlight technique in order to fully illuminate my subjects' face evenly. On the day in which I shot these images, it was more of an overcast frontlight which diffused the light to create a more even light source to bathe the subject in. In this case, I was required to lower my shutter speed a tiny bit because there was a slight greyness to the lighting, and I wanted to allow more light in to the lens. The next type of lighting is backlighting, seen in my third image, and served to be more challenging. The light source comes from behind the subject and shines directly in to the photographer’s lens. One type of backlight can be to create a silhouette. However, I chose to avoid the silhouette because exposure of a silhouette can be challenging. I did still struggled to correctly expose my subject when I first began to use this technique. I first had to correctly meter for the subject's face in order to accomplish proper exposure. Although the background became overexposed, I still managed to depict the proper flesh tones of my subjects face. The third lighting technique I utilized today was sidelight. This is when the light hitting the subjects comes from their side, illuminating only a portion of their body. This helps to create dimensionality that the other techniques sometimes miss. Although this can be a challenge, I found it to be the easiest and most fun to try and create. My first two images embody the side lighting technique. The first one I shot during the morning hour and the second one was shot when the subject was near a window. Both served to create the sidelight effect.

ISO: 200
SS: 1/30
f/5.6

ISO: 100
SS: 1/25
f/5.6

ISO: 100
SS: 1/60
f/5.6

ISO: 100
SS: 1/100
f/5.6