Photographic Lighting Lesson 3

The Book Light: Science and Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting is a true classic on photographic lighting and I recommend highly that you borrow, or buy a copy and take your time reading and thinking about it.

I realize that for many this is impossible or simply not the way you learn best.  I certainly think you can learn to light without it, but this particular book is an excellent reference that can give you a real jump start.

That said, what I really want to give you in this article is some insight into using your flash to create better images.  David Hobby over at Strobist is probably the most accessible professional out there for learning this.  David’s incredibly comprehensive site and his articulate presentation of information is simply a must-read.  When you go there, pay your first visits to his Lighting 101 and Lighting 102 Archive listings.  These can be found in the right-hand sidebar.  If you read each of these and follow David’s instructions, you will do much for your ability to light.  What’s more, you’ll find it almost effortless because David presents an approach that does not require light meters or any special equipment.  Feel encouraged to experiment.  Mistakes cost nothing on a digital camera.

One of the great things I’ve learned from the Strobist is how to get the ambient light in a scene where I want it, and then add one or more lights to obtain a desired effect.  One of my first attempts at using this knowledge was to demonstrate to myself that I could control the look of a white wall behind a subject.  Below are a series of images that show the same wall in shades of gray from white to black.

White or light gray - just the wall

In this particular case, I darkened the room.  This was really due more to inexperience than necessity.  I then lit the background with my hot-shoe flash set to remote trigger when the other lights fired.  The idea here was to get a correct exposure of both the subject and the background.  This is a two-light setup.  The speedlight for the background and a small softbox for the subject.  I feathered the softbox to prevent its light falling on the background.  Basically that means that I angled it such that the edges of the light did not illuminate the background.  This isn’t possible if the subject is very close to the background, however.  In this case, my subject was over ten feet away from the wall.

Once I had a correct exposure dialed in (shooting manual here and just chimping until something good shows up) I reduced the power coming out of the flash.  Later in the series I plan to talk about a better approach to this, but that’s how I did it here.   The result was the images below.  Medium gray, dark gray, and finally (no light at all) black.

The real trick, of course, is to be able to do this is a well-lit room.  A future lesson will discuss that, but if you can achieve the result this way, you’ll have taken a solid first step into the realm of light control.

Dark gray

Black

Once I had the light where I wanted it, I carefully composed the final shot.  A low-key image of the subject.  I was personally very satisfied with the result.  As we progress through the lessons, you’ll see much better and more flexible ways to do this.  Varying the light level works in some cases, but often you have to use other techniques, as we’ll see.

Final image