Lighting and Modelling

Lighting and Modelling.

Lighting Terminology:

• High-Key Lighting: Good for beauty shots as it makes skin look clear and bright with lots of detail.
• Low-Key Lighting: Good for dramatic shots and portraits where the photograph is only intended to hit highlighted areas of the face.
• Soft Light: Shooting with a soft light is goo for post production as contrast can be adjusted much easier.
• Umbrella Lights: Soft light, suggested to have light positioned above the camera. Can have white or silver/ reflective umbrellas which give a softer appearance with more light and less shadows. Large umbrellas will give an even softer light.
• Natural Lighting: Hard to recreate in a studio. Looks more natural for beauty shots and less artificial. 
• Beauty Dish: Used in glamour and beauty photography frequently. Gives the circular light shape in the pupil of the eye when model looks directly into the lights. Lighting up the centre of the face predominantly and creating natural shadows across the face.
• Soft Box: Creates soft light for shoots. Can have varied positions to create different lighting arrangements. 
• Polyboards: Large boards that reflect and absorb light depending on the colour to create lighter or moodier lightings.
• Reflectors: reflects light off model on a small scale, taking shadows away from under the chin for example.

 Playing around with lighting and poses to get used to the camera.

Turning up the lamp to Level 4 to create a much more flattering look that picked up the highlight and natural glow on the face. 

Using the infinity cove, no back lighting, frontal light. 

Infinity cove with reflector board underneath face to create less shadow. 

Soft box lighting with lighting to the right hand side of the studio.

Soft box lighting with reflector board underneath to take shadows away from under chin.

Strongest lighting using large bulb and high brightness.

Experimenting with lighting and photographing my models has helped me gain better knowledge for my photoshoot ideas and what sort of lighting I would like to use. I now want to try the lighting on different background tones such as grey and black, as I think I would like to use grey as my background setting for my final image to add more depth and contrast to my photographs.