Lighting for Commercial Photography An online workshop with Charlie Borland Charlie Borland's Lighting for Commercial Photography All photos and text © Charlie Borland, all rights reserved worldwide. No form of reproduction or usage - including copying, altering, or saving of digital image and text files - is permitted without the express written permission of Charlie Borland Page 2 Lesson #1: Understanding Light Lighting is a key ingredient in defining a successful photo. Without light, there would be no photography or life as we know it. Think of how light affects the world around us. The landscape is shaped by light and gives you a visual story in showing the layout of the land by defining textures within the landscape. In the studio, lighting for a portrait provides you the visual information about that person, the color of their hair, the shape of their face, and the color of their eyes, and tells us who they are. Lighting is used very successfully in photographing products in which the photo entices us to buy a product. Lighting techniques make food look better to us, a car more appealing, a model sexier. In this lesson, we will discuss a variety of different types of light, light quality, and light direction. Here is an example of one light source, the sun, lighting the landscape in Badlands NP. The low an- gle is creating a texture of light and shadow that gives the landscape a visual impression of the shape of the land. This is ambient light-light I have no control over. This industrial photograph, taken for an annual re- port used all artificial light and required 8 strobe heads with umbrellas, grids, and soft boxes as well as color gels on the lights to create this dramatic photograph Understanding light and how it works is a vital aspect of creating great photos. As photographers, we are working with basically two types of light; available light and light we create. Available light is known as Ambient light. This is light that exists and is constant. Sure, in some cases, it is light we can turn on or off, but it is usually a continuous light source. It could be sunlight, light from street lights, light from lamps in our living room, and lights in an office or manufacturing plant. But it is always the light source that is constant and can also be looked at as the light that you may not have control over its adjust- ment. Charlie Borland's Lighting for Commercial Photography All photos and text © Charlie Borland, all rights reserved worldwide. No form of reproduction or usage - including copying, altering, or saving of digital image and text files - is permitted without the express written permission of Charlie Borland Page 3 Supplemental or secondary light is strobe (flash) or ‘hot lights’. Strobes are flash lights and hot lights are constant lights. In both cases, you can set up these lights and move them in or out of your photo setup. Strobe lights are by far the most commonly used type of supplemental lights used in commercial photography. Strobe lights also have the ability to change the output of the light emitted during each flash by an adjustment of the power settings. Hot lights can also be adjusted by a control making brighter or dim- mer, but this also changes the color temperature of the light as the Even an on-camera flash power is reduced. Strobes emit a flash that is instant and does not is a useful tool for creat- vary much in the amount of time that it is on. ing light effects beyond the ordinary. There is no such thing as bad light, only light used improperly! -Andreas Feinenger LIGHT QUALITY: SOFT VS HARD The quality of light is described by how hard or soft the shadow created by the light source is. Soft light and hard light are determined by the size of the light source in relation to the subject. Generally, the larger, more diffused the light source, the softer the light quality and shadows. If you have hard sunlight on your subject, the shadows are going to have hard edges like the scenic photo above. When the clouds cover the sun, a huge diffuser has been placed over the light source and the shadows be- come softer. When you place a diffuser in front of a hard light source and close to it, the shadows cast by the subject are as hard as if the diffuser wasn’t used. The farther you move the diffuser away from the light source and closer to the subject, the softer the shadow edges become. The idea here is that the larger the light sources in relation to the subject, the softer the light. Raw Flash Head thru Diffuser Raw Flash Head thru Diffuser Notice when the diffuser is placed next to the strobe, the diffusers effect is non existent as indicated by the hard edge shadows on the products. Charlie Borland's Lighting for Commercial Photography All photos and text © Charlie Borland, all rights reserved worldwide. No form of reproduction or usage - including copying, altering, or saving of digital image and text files - is permitted without the express written permission of Charlie Borland Page 4 Raw Flash Head thru Diffuser Raw Flash Head thru Diffuser Diffuser is close to product Diffuser is close to product However, when you move the diffuser away from the light and close to the subject the shadows and contrast are soft. HIGHLIGHTS: SPECULAR AND DIFFUSED Specular highlights are described as spot, hot spot, or mirror like while diffused are wide and soft. Here we are talking about highlights rather than light quality. Imagine that you are shooting a car in front of a house and the sun is shining on it. When you walk around the car looking for an angle to shoot, a hot spot of the sun appears on the car. It could be on the hood, the windshield, or anywhere that you see the suns reflection. Now come back and look at the car when the sky is overcast. There will be no hot spot, but rather one large soft highlight. Specular Highlight Diffused Highlight The difference between specular and diffused highlights is in the size of the highlight, but also notice that specular has a shadow where diffused does not. Charlie Borland's Lighting for Commercial Photography All photos and text © Charlie Borland, all rights reserved worldwide. No form of reproduction or usage - including copying, altering, or saving of digital image and text files - is permitted without the express written permission of Charlie Borland Page 5 LIGHT QUALITY: FLAT VS CONTRAST Flat light has a shorter relationship between highlight and shadows. Imagine white and black objects against white. If the light is soft and diffused (flat) there will most likely not be a black shadow or a pure white highlight. Contrasty light has a more extreme range between shadow and highlight. The same subjects with hard light as the light source will probably have a pure black area in the shadows and a white highlight. Flat Light Contrasty Light This example represents the difference between flat and contrasty light. Notice the white cup is gray in the flat light and white in the contrasty light. LIGHT DIRECTION Light comes from all directions and as such creates a variety of different lighting looks. Light direction controls the shape of shadows. It’s these shadows that define the shape, texture, and form of our sub- jects. Direction defines the difference between shadow and highlight. Light direction comes from all angles and sides, but is usually defined as side light, backlight, front light, top light, etc. Front Light 45 degree Side Light 90 Degree Side Light Back Light Charlie Borland's Lighting for Commercial Photography All photos and text © Charlie Borland, all rights reserved worldwide. No form of reproduction or usage - including copying, altering, or saving of digital image and text files - is permitted without the express written permission of Charlie Borland Page 6 These four images show the same light angles. The left portrait is frontal beauty lighting while the sec- ond portrait is 45 degree light. The beer is lit from the side and the climber is backlit, creating a silhou- ette. ANGLE OF INCIDENCE The Angle of Incidence of light is an important aspect about lighting and must be understood. When a light source emitting light reaches an object at a certain angle, that light is then bounced off the subject at the same angle. If the sun is at a point in the sky where it shines a specular highlight on a surface of water at a 45 degree angle, then the light bouncing off that water surface will be at a 45 degree angle as well. Imagine that you are taking a picture of your friend in front of a window. When you take the picture your flash has just created a glaring hot spot in the window behind your friend. This is because the Angle of Incidence is equal and at the same angle from light source to the camera. If you moved to the left or right and move your friend accordingly, you can move the reflection caused by the Angle of Incidence out of your frame. Charlie Borland's Lighting for Commercial Photography All photos and text © Charlie Borland, all rights reserved worldwide. No form of reproduction or usage - including copying, altering, or saving of digital image and text files - is permitted without the express written permission of Charlie Borland Page 7 Angle of Incidence Reflection Angle of Incidence Diagram The hot spot on the phone and table top illustrates how light hitting a surface bounce off at the same angle A of I Reflection is removed Umbrella was moved back By moving the light back, the Angle of Incidence has also moved back off the phone.