Tom Clark - Digital Photography Composition For Dummies

Use reflective material.This is the simplest way to reduce contrast on a sunny day. Many products are made specifically for photographers, but I use a piece of foam insulation with a shiny surface. You can buy it at any hardware store for less than $10. Have your assistant stand next to you and hold whatever reflective material you decide to use to bounce the sunlight at the subject. This technique increases the intensity of your fill light and reduces the contrast on your subject.

I used the preceding technique to take the photo in Figure 10-3. Notice the light that's being created by the direct sun, which is causing the highlight on the right edge of the subject. And take a look at the light that's being created by the reflected sunlight, which is filling in the face. Without the reflector, my subject's face would have been much darker.

Combine reflective material and diffusion material.Photographers often use this combination to soften the sunlight on a subject (see the preceding section). The result is soft light with low contrast. You see this type of lighting in clothing catalogs like Victoria's Secret.

50mm, 1/640 sec, f/4, 100

Figure 10-3:Reducing contrast by increasing the intensity of your fill light.

Using strobes (instead of the sun) to light your scene puts you in total control and enables you to maintain consistent lighting throughout the shoot. In the most basic situation, you have a directional key light and a fill light. You can use light modifiers to control the quality of your light, and you can control the intensity of your fill light in comparison with that of the key light to manipulate your contrast in the scene. (I discuss strobes and light modifiers in the preceding section.) Your strobes have dials, slides, or switches that allow you to increase or decrease the amount of light they produce during each pop.

Light quality and intensity (which I discuss earlier in the chapter) are important ingredients when creating appropriate lighting for your photo's message. The third ingredient is the physical relationship of the light source to the subject. The position and distance of your lights in relation to your subject control many aspects of your achieved look and how you represent the subject.

In this section, I examine how the distance and position (or lighting pattern) of a light source can affect the quality of light it provides and change the way you see a subject. I also provide some information to help you add a third light source and experiment with breaking the traditional lighting patterns for creativity.

A larger light source creates softer light. Luckily, if you can't increase the size of your light source, you can simply move it closer to your subject. Doing so softens the light by increasing its surface area in relation to the subject.

On a similar note, the closer a light source is to a subject, the more intense the light becomes. So, if you want to keep the same level of contrast you had before moving the light, you may need to reduce the intensity of the light after moving it.

On the other hand, the farther a light source is from the subject, the harder the light will be. Consider the sun as a light source. If it were really close to you, it would be large enough to send light from many different angles and would cover you with a soft light quality (but, unfortunately, its nearness

would cause all sorts of tragedy as well). But, because the sun is really far away, it's small in comparison to you on earth and provides light only from a specific angle. Therefore, because of its distance, the sun provides hard light.

Imagine that you're working with strobes and using a soft box to soften your key light. And say you want to soften the light more, but you're already using the largest soft box you own. In this case, simply move your strobe closer to your subject. Doing so gives you a softer quality of light but also a more intense light. (See the earlier section "Understanding Light Quality and Intensity" for more about these photography tools and techniques.)

The position of your light source is an important factor in getting the lighting of your scene the way you want it. The angle at which a directional key light source hits your subject determines the lighting pattern that's created. A lighting pattern is an effect created with highlights and shadows based on the angle of the light to the subject.

The lighting patterns I discuss in this section have been developed to optimize the way you photograph human subjects, but keep in mind that these styles of lighting can be applied to other subjects as well. You can read more about portraiture in Chapter 13.

A person's face is made up of familiar shapes that are affected by light in certain ways when approached from different angles. Each face is unique and needs to be treated slightly different from the next, but certain lighting patterns show a face in its most appealing way. For example, you can use a lighting pattern to slim a wide face, widen a slim face, increase or decrease the appearance of a face's features, or decrease the appearance of the skin's texture.

Here are the four major lighting patterns, which I show you in Figure 10-4:

The paramount:This pattern provides a minimal amount of direction, which decreases the level of shadows and minimizes texture in the skin. The key light comes from the direction of the camera but at a higher angle, causing a small shadow under the nose and on the neck under the chin. You can see these shadows in the top left image of Figure 10-4. By putting the shadow under the chin, you help separate the face from the neck (which is especially good for photographing people with weak chins or neck fat that you don't want to highlight). The paramount pattern highlights the entire width of the face, so it's ideal for widening a slim face; however, as a result, it's not ideal for someone who already has a wide face.

The loop:This pattern is achieved by rotating the key light away from the camera to the left or right of the subject until the shadow from the nose falls off to one side rather than down. This pattern's light is more directional than the paramount's, and it highlights one side of the face slightly more than the other. For instance, note the shadow on the right side of the woman's face in the top right image. The loop pattern is good for slimming the face while also maintaining most of the benefits of the paramount. Notice that skin texture is revealed more in the loop pattern than in the paramount.

The Rembrandt:This pattern was named after the famous painter and was a pattern he commonly used. You achieve the pattern by rotating the key light even farther from the camera than you did for the Loop pattern. The shadow from the nose should connect with the shadow from the far side of the face. (Tip: You may have to tweak the height of the light source to get the shadows and highlights to appear where you want them.) This pattern leaves a highlighted area shaped like an upside-down triangle on the shadow side of the face. See what I mean in the bottom left image of Figure 10-4.

A Rembrandt, which has a more dramatic feel than the paramount or the loop, is great for slimming the face. Notice how the Rembrandt causes the face to appear much slimmer than the paramount and loop, even when the face is shot from the same angle as it was throughout Figure 10-4. Keep in mind that this pattern also tends to reveal the skin's texture. You also can use it to draw attention to the eyes.