There are a 5 basic lighting styles for portrait photography. Each style is defined by how light falls on the face.
When the subject’s whole face is towards the camera, there are three basic lighting styles.
Rembrandt Light – the model is face forward, main light is at 45 degrees and casts a light on the opposite side of the face to form a triangle on the cheek.
Michael B. Jordan. Photographer: Peggy Sirota
2. Butterfly Light, Clamshell or beauty or glamour light-model is face forward, front light.
Tyra Banks. Photographer: Matthew Jordan Smith
3. Split Light-model is face forward, the main light is at 90 degrees to the camera and falls on one side of the face.
Lewis Wickes Hine (U.S.A., 1874–1940), One of the spinners in Whitnel Cotton Mfg. Co. N.C. December 1908.
When the subject is in 3/4 view, there are two basic lighting styles.
4. Broad Light-light falls on the side of the face with the visible ear. Good for controlling the reflections on glasses.
Danny Devito. Photographer: Gregory Heisler.
5. Short Light-the light falls on the side of the face with the features. (Not on the side with the visible ear.)
Aretha Franklin. Photographer: Matthew Jordan Smith
Both of these are examples of short light. Here the light is slightly behind the subject.
Enter your best image! Get extra credit. Entries due March 28th.
Inspiration
Shutter Speed
Shutter Speed is the length of time that the sensor is exposed to light to create the photograph. It is measured in seconds or fractions of a second.
The full stops for shutter speed are: 30”, 15”, 8”, 4”, 2”, 1”, . sec, ., 1/8, 1/15, 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250, 1/500, 1/1000, 1/2000, 1/4000, 1/8000
Doubling the time, doubles the amount of light that reaches the sensor.
When shooting with a cameraphone and the Lightroom Photoshop app, you can set the shutter speed of your cameraphone between 1/10,000 and 1/4 sec.
A good rule of thumb when shooting with a camera is: Any shutter speeds slower then 1/60 require the use of a tripod. When shooting with a cameraphone, you will need a tripod to shoot at 1/15 or slower.
Resource
Capturing Motion
Your choice of shutter speed will change the way motion is captured in the photograph.
Frozen Motion-Motion is stopped and captured in the frame with a fast shutter speed.
The exact moment that you take the picture is as important as how long the shutter speed is. This is often called:
The Decisive Moment: A term coined by Cartier Bresson- “the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression.”
Respect the presenter. Give them your full attention.
Ask questions about your colleague’s photography. This is not the time to ask questions about your personal concerns.
Start with the positive when you comment on your colleague’s works. Use the terms below that we have learned this semester.
Be generous. Offer your thoughts. Your opinion and judgements are important. Do not leave the work of giving feedback to the others in the class.
Vocabulary
Framing: How the frame brings together the elements inside the rectangle juxtaposing them, creating relationships between them
Types of shots: how much information is in the frame
a long shot
a medium shot
a close up
an extreme close up.
Frame within a frame – use elements in the frame to enclose the main subject and draw attention to it. A frame within a frame can be a window or door or it can be items in the foreground such as branches.
Angle of View: describes the camera position in relationship to the subject. The angle of view may be:
a worm’s-eye view
a low-angle
eye-level
a high-angle
a bird’s-eye or aerial or overhead view
an oblique angle.
Rule of Thirds – Instead of placing the main subject in the center of the frame, divide the frame into thirds horizontally and vertically and place the main subject at one of these intersections.
Symmetry-fold the image in half and the two sides are equivalent
Fill the Frame – (get closer) – do not leave empty areas that do not add to the composition and plan to crop in later.
Diagonals – Sloping lines
Leading Lines – lines in the photograph that lead the eye to the main subject
Perspective-the creation of the feeling of a 3D space on a 2D surface usually with converging lines or diminishing scale
Patterns – repeated elements. Break the pattern for visual interest
Figure to Ground -the relationship between the subject and the background sometimes described as negative and positive space.
Diffused light – light that comes from many directions and creates soft shadows
Direct light– light that come from one direction and creates hard shadows
Contrast: The measure of difference between bright areas (highlights) and dark areas (shadows) in a photo
High contrast : Large difference between highlights and shadows. Mostly lights and darks without many mid tones
Low contrast : Little difference between lights and darks. Mostly mid tones.
Aspect Ratio-the proportion of the width of the image to the height of a 2D image
Clipping-the intensity of the light falls outside of what can be recorded by the camera and there is a loss of detail.
Color Profile-the data for a digital device, such as a printer or monitor, which describes its gamut, or range of colors. Used to match the gamut from one device to another.
Exif Data-information stored by the camera in the file.
Gamut-range of colors
Histogram- a graphic representation of the tones in an image. A spike of data on the left side indicates underexposure, on the right overexposure.
Neutral Value-RGB values are equal or gray
Non-destructive Editing-adjust the image without overwriting the original image data. Instructions are written to a sidecar file that tells the software how to interpret the image.
White Balance-the setting that adjusts for the color temperature of the light and that will make a white object appear white or a gray object a neutral value
Global Corrections
Global corrections adjust the entire file. In the Lightroom CC, it includes the controls under Light, Color and Effects. In Lightroom classic, this includes everything in the basic panel: White balance, Tone and Presence.
Both exposures are “right.” It depends on the feeling and mood you want to create.
When to Use Auto
Auto is a great feature of Lightroom. If the tones in an image will more or less average out to a medium gray, Auto will give you a good result. If the tones in the image do not average out to a medium gray, Auto is useless.
Photographer: Ze HuangPhotographer: Sandra Humala
Using the Histogram
Example file:
The histogram is a graphic representation of the tones in the photograph. It is a guide to exposure decisions. Most images look best when there is a full range of tones from black to white in the image. But there are no iron clad rules.
To access the histogram in Lightroom, from the keyboard select: Command 0
Or get it from the three dots on the right menu bar.
From the top of the histogram, there is a triangular button. Toggle it to turn on/off show clipping.
To maximize the the tonal range, adjust a photo to have some tones that are totally black and totally white but only a few so that you don’t lose detail in either the shadows or the highlights.
Looking at the histogram, we can see that there is not a true black or white. To raise the contrast of the image and use the full tonal range, use the following adjustments:
Select show clipping on the top left of the histogram. Adjust the blacks slider to the left until you see bright blue flecks on your image.
Select show clipping on the top right of the histogram. Adjust the whites slider to the right until you see bright red flecks on your image.
Most images improve with:
shadows slider to +50 add detail to the dark areas
the highlights slider brought to the left to bring detail into the highlights.
In this photo of the pier in Coney Island, the histogram shows that is underexposed. But we also know that it is an evening scene and that there is nothing in the photo that should be bright white.
Lightroom Workflow:
Optics: enable lens correction. If there is architecture or a strong horizon line, geometry>upright>auto
Crop.
Color. Adjust the white balance if necessary.
Light a. Exposure slider-use to adjust the overall tonality b. Set black point using show clipping c. Set white point using show clipping d. Use shadows slider to brighten mid tones.
Effects – Adjust clarity (mid tone contrast)
App: color – Adjust vibrance and or saturation
Detail panel – Sharpen-amount at least 50
Lightroom CC Resource
Lightroom Classic Resource
A few tips for Lightroom Mobile:
To access the histogram, tap on the image with two fingers. If you can’t really see the histogram background, brighten the display.
To see the image before your corrections, press on the image.
Next week, March 13th, the class will start with a quiz. The quiz will have three questions on the following topics all from the OpenLab topics pages: Exposure, Light-quality and direction, contrast, studio basics: continuous lights vs strobes, Flood lights vs spot lights, composition including angles of view, framing, rule of thirds, leading lines, a frame within a frame, symmetry, figure to ground and a compare and contrast of two photos that will be graded on your use of the vocabulary from the class.
Review:
Light Quality
Light is either direct or diffused.
Direct light: the light strikes the subject from one angle and creates sharp shadows. Sunlight is an example of direct light.
Exposure is the amount of light that comes into the camera to create the photograph.
Exposure is made up of three components:
ISO-Sensitivity to light.
Shutter Speed-the length of time that the camera’s shutter is open during the exposure.
Aperture-how wide the cameras lens opens to allow the light to come in.
All three are measured in stops. The different between one full stop and the next is it either doubles or reduces by 1/2 the amount of light. This is true of ISO, shutter speed and aperture.
Exposure Basics
When hand holding the camera – as opposed to using a tripod – set the shutter speed fast enough to account for your motion as a living breathing moving person.
Generally, 1/125 is fast enough for this. It will not stop the motion of a moving subject but it will keep your motion from adding a bit of softening motion blur to your entire photo.
ISO 100 is best quality. Higher ISOs introduce noise but up to ISO 1600 you are unlikely to see much noise. Raise the ISO instead of making the shutter speed longer than 1/125.
How your Camera Meter Works
Acronym: TTL – Through the Lens
The meter in your camera is a reflected-light meter.
A reflected light meter averages the tones in the scene and selects the aperture and shutter speed values that will make the whole scene medium gray.
Watch from :45 to 1:34 for an explanation of how your camera meter works.
What your camera meter “sees” From Photography, 10th Edition, Stone, London, Upton, P. 70
Challenges
There are certain predictable situations that will fool your meter.
Backlight – a common example is a person against a window or against the sky. Add exposure to get the right exposure for the main subject and allow the background to be overexposed.
Photographer: Lindsey Perez f/20, 1/400, ISO 1600Photographer: Lindsey Perez f/6.3, 1/400, ISO 1600
2. Landscapes with sky. The sky is brighter than the ground and to get a good exposure of the land portion of your photo, often you need to over expose the sky.
Photographer: Kalia Cruz f/6.3, 1/160, ISO 250Photographer: Kalia Cruz f/16, 1/160, ISO 250
Using Exposure for Creative Effect
Sometimes, you don’t want the tones in your image to average out to a medium gray. You want to tones to be low key-mostly dark or high key-mostly light.
Photographer: Sandra Tan f/4.5, 1/125, ISO400Photographer: Eric Humala F/8, 1/125, ISO 100Photographer: Charles Izzo f/4, 1/125, ISO 400Photographer: Xueying Liu f/8, 1/125, ISO 100
Both exposures are “right.” It depends on the feeling and mood you want to create.
A quick way to control exposure
With a camera: Use Exposure Compensation set to plus to increase the light and set to minus to decrease the light.
Exposure compensation scale set here to minus 1.3
Exposure Compensation-a way to force the camera to make an exposure either lighter or darker than the meter reading. Good for backlight or extremes of light and dark.
With a cameraphone: Touch the area where the main subject is and then drag the little sun icon up or down to increase or decrease the overall exposure.
Recent Comments