14 & 21 Oct 09: Lighting #4 - Exploring its characteristics on location

Lighting can be incident - light that falls directly onto the subject, or reflective - light that bounces off the subject.  The camera measures reflective light.  A light meter can be used to measure both types of light.  When taking a portrait incident light should be measured.
There are a number of features of light that need to be taken into account in photography:

Quality
Direction
Contrast
Colour
Intensity
Un/evenness

Light comes in different temperatures, for example:

• a household bulb has on average a temperature of 3,200Kelvin.  This is a warm light
• daylight is colder at around 5,400K (varies with the time of day/year)
• candlelight is only 1,000K
• HMI light, used on movie sets and outdoor photo shoots, is 6,000K

• These lights are very expensive.  A cheaper alternative is to use a tungsten Fresnel light @ 3,200K with blue gel to reproduce the HMI light.  The downside is that Fresnel lights get very hot.
 
Andy suggested a couple of photographers we should look at who use light in different ways:

• Gregory Crewdson, who manipulates light to form part of the narrative in his pictures - see http://www.luhringaugustine.com/index.php?mode=artists&object_id=66 ; and
• Alec Soth, who captures natural light in his images - see http://www.alecsoth.com/Mississippi-new/pages/frameset.html

We tried out different features of light in our next shoot on 21 October when we went "out and about" around the college building looking for different types of light to shoot portraits under.  The camera white balance was set at 4,000K (all at f/5.6, ISO 400 1/13 sec).  Here is a selection of my images:
 1.  Taken in the corridor with Fay and Colin standing directly under a down-lighter.  The light is quite harsh and casts shadows on their faces.

2. Fay stands at the corner of a corridor with the brightest light coming from her left.  This has got rid of all the shadows.

3. In the ladies toilets where the light is not kind!

4. Colin stands on a walkway which has glass walls, so the light falls directly on his face from the front as well as illuminating him from behind.  The light from the front is so strong it creates shadows on his face from his hair and glasses and the image is very over exposed.

5. On the stairs using the light from a sign on the wall above Fay's head. (You can just see the light source in the top left corner).  There is also some light from the window behind Fay.  This creates much more atmospheric lighting.

6. In a corner on the stairs - light on both sides is reflected off the walls onto  Fay

7.  In the Atrium with light shining directly from above - Fay's face is fully illuminated but there is some overexposure on the left side of her face where highlights have been lost.

9. Under a fluorescent strip light with backlighting from the window.  There is flare from the window and shadows on Fay's face:

10. In the lift where the light reflects of the lift doors and walls.  The light is rather grey but softer than I expected and the reflection means that Fay's face is evenly lit with no shadows:

11. Using only the light from a computer screen - it's obvious really, very definite shadow on one side of the face and brightly lit on the other.