The final part of the basics of photography series is lighting. There are two worlds of lighting: natural lighting and artificial lighting. And there are some misconceptions about them both. But the last thing I want to hear out of your mouth and something you should never tell yourself is some lame excuse like; “shooting without modifiers is just more real.”
Shut up, go home, if you’re home, get out of town, drown yourself in queso (eating it), dont be dumb, youre not dumb, and even if you are dumb people can still learn and remember how to do these things. My long point is to say again photography is a skill the more you practice the better you get. The more you practice the better you understand. This is the last of the basics if you don’t want to learn it you don’t want to get better.
Now to lighting, I will start with natural light because most people think they have this on lock. But NO YOU DO NOT. Yes, you can go outside and tell someone to stand in the sunlight but from the side at golden hour but then you can only be a photographer for four 4 hours a day max. Then what do you do?
Natural Lighting is shaping the light you receive from the scene already. Easiest source to remember is the sun but there are also lamps, lights, reflections, the moon, and many other options. It is anything motivated by the scene. Yes, that does mean the sun at golden hour is a great example.
What do I mean about shaping the light? This is where we can use modifiers and positioning to take a better picture. What are modifiers? Anything that changes the light: filters, reflectors, shadows. These are your best ways to create better photos. Just using one source is not enough unless you make it into two or three sources.
Artificial Lighting is a lot simpler, it is anything that is not motivated by the scene. I used to think that this style of lighting looked fake. But that is not true because most of the photos I saw that were “realistic looking and obviously not artificial” were actually lit with artificial lighting.
Artificial lighting can be the whole scene or it can be used to supplement the natural lighting you already have. For instance, using a flash to fill in the shadows on your subject when shooting outside mid day. It is just practical, don’t die on a hill this early.
The 3 Point Setup, this is the free throw of photography. If you understand how to do this you will no longer be leaving easy points on the floor. Not a basketball fan, it’s like going to a restaurant on your birthday and not getting the free dessert.
This basic lighting display has
- 1 key light (the main light showing us our subject in a dramatic way)
- 2 backlight (the second light, the brightest light that separates the subject from the background in the space. Most common example is a hair light.)
- 3 fill light (the dimmest, light this light is used to fill in the part of the subject you are not keyed in on interest wise but still want illuminated for that natural look. Sometimes if the shoot is right you can skip this one.)
You are probably thinking to yourself “how am I supposed to do this? I am broke.” I’ve said it before myself. This morning probably. I will tell you to purchase one thing to start your lighting journey. A 5 in 1 reflector. Extremely mobile, and easy to use to fill out the 3 point lighting setup. Once you have this go out and practice!
What I want you to do for this assignment: go out with a reflector, a subject, and a friend or a stand, the last one will be holding your reflector. Set up the sun as the backlight, and use the reflector as a key/fill light. This is only to get you started with this kind of lighting so feel free to change that around a bit. Reflector as backlight sun as key/fill. However you want to try go for it. But the point is to make you comfortable with lighting. So…
Get to shooting!