Master Photo Lighting

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
Book 1 - Master Photo Lighting - Light 101
Introduction
Simple system
Aperture
Depth Of Field
The F Stop
Shutter Speed And Aperture Combinations
Light!
Additive Light
Color Temperature
The Kelvin Light Temperature Scale
How Color Of Light is Determined
Pop Quiz
Types And Uses Of Light
Ambient Light
Incandescent Light
Why use a strobe light?
The Filters In Our Minds
Fixing A Color Cast
Strobe Lighting
The Modeling Light
Flash Photo Secrets!
How And Why To Diffuse Your On Camera Flash!
Lighting Photo Portraits - The Basics
The main light
The fill light
Separation light
Creative Lighting
In Studio Portrait Lighting - Spending More IS Better!
Good lights cost a bundle!
What to do?
Photography Lighting Techniques - 3 Vital Tips
Photo Exercise 1
Metering
Reflected Light Meters
How To Calibrate A Film Camera’s Meter
How To Calibrate A Digital Camera’s Meter
Reflectance Meter Problems
Calibrating Incident Light Meters
Photo Exercise 2
Book 2 - Master Photo Lighting - Hard Light
Introduction
Ambient Light
Ambient Light Defined
Light Qualities
Shadows
Raccoon Eyes
Visually lose weight
Glare
Hard Light
Hard Light Defined
Light Quality
Control Viewer Emotions
Texture
What about wrinkles?
Light Angles Matter
Photo Exercise 1
Light Shaping
Barn Doors
The Snoot
Making Your Light Bigger
Flags, Dots And Fingers
Cookies And Gobos
Photo Exercise 2
Book 3 - Master Photo Lighting - Soft Light
Introduction
Dynamic Range
Narrowing The Lighting Ratio
Exposing For The Extremes
Dynamic Range Hierarchy
Why Care About Dynamic Range?
High Dynamic Range (HDR) Photography
Shadows
Shadows Determine What Type Of Light You Should Use
Spotlights
When You Don’t Want Shadows!
When You DO Want Shadows
Deciding On Hard Or Soft Light
Soft Light
Soft Light Defined
The Photography Diffuser - A Portable Cloud
Hard And Soft Light From The Same Source!
Soft Light Advantage
The Umbrella
The Softbox
Make Your Own Softbox
Test Your New Softbox!
Other Soft Light Options
Composition
Composition Defined
Framing
Vignette
Shape
Size
Space
Mood
Diagonals
Symmetry
Clutter
Photo Exercise
Book 4 - Photo Mastery - Shadows, Form And Texture
Introduction
Light Makes Shadow
Color Temperature - Kelvin Scale
Light Meters
Reflected Light Meter
Problems With Reflected Light
Incident Light Meter
Ambient Light
Ambient Light Qualities
Shadows From Hard Ambient Light
Soft Ambient Light Shadows
The Main/Key Light
Planning The Shadow
Squinting
Raccoon Eyes
Do You HATE Those Pesky Shadows?
Shadows Define Form
Vital - write this in your notebook!
The Fill Light
Learning Photography Lighting Techniques!
Photo Exercise - 1
Photo Exercise - 2
Fixing Problem Areas
Shadow Lighting Patterns
Split Light
Loop Light
Butterfly Light
Texture Requires Shadow!
Glare
How to fix eyeglass glare?
Red Eye
Photo Exercise - 3
Observation training
Your final exercise
Other Books By Dan Eitreim
Fiction:
Non-Fiction
Book Bundles:
Other Useful - Non Photography - E-books
Thank You
Disclaimer

Citation preview

Master Photo Lighting Book 1 - Master Photo Lighting - Light 101, Book 2 - Master Photo Lighting Hard Light, Book 3 - Master Photo Lighting - Soft Light, Book 4 - Photo Mastery - Shadows, Form And Texture By Dan Eitreim

Master Photo Lighting: Book 1 - Master Photo Lighting - Light 101, Book 2 Master Photo Lighting - Hard Light, Book 3 - Master Photo Lighting - Soft Light, Book 4 - Photo Mastery - Shadows, Form And Texture Copyright © 2018 by Dan Eitreim All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission or further information should be addressed to: Author: Dan Eitreim 10650 7th Ave. Hesperia, California 92345 Published by: On Target Publishing Published in the United States of America Please read the full disclaimer at the end of this book.

Table of Contents Book 1 - Master Photo Lighting - Light 101 Introduction Simple system Aperture Depth Of Field The F Stop Shutter Speed And Aperture Combinations

Light! Additive Light

Color Temperature The Kelvin Light Temperature Scale How Color Of Light is Determined Pop Quiz

Types And Uses Of Light Ambient Light Incandescent Light Why use a strobe light? The Filters In Our Minds Fixing A Color Cast Strobe Lighting The Modeling Light Flash Photo Secrets! How And Why To Diffuse Your On Camera Flash!

Lighting Photo Portraits - The Basics The main light The fill light Separation light Creative Lighting In Studio Portrait Lighting - Spending More IS Better! Good lights cost a bundle! What to do? Photography Lighting Techniques - 3 Vital Tips

Photo Exercise 1 Metering Reflected Light Meters How To Calibrate A Film Camera’s Meter How To Calibrate A Digital Camera’s Meter Reflectance Meter Problems Calibrating Incident Light Meters

Photo Exercise 2 Book 2 - Master Photo Lighting - Hard Light Introduction Ambient Light Ambient Light Defined

Light Qualities Shadows Raccoon Eyes Visually lose weight Glare

Hard Light Hard Light Defined Light Quality

Control Viewer Emotions Texture What about wrinkles? Light Angles Matter

Photo Exercise 1 Light Shaping Barn Doors The Snoot Making Your Light Bigger Flags, Dots And Fingers Cookies And Gobos

Photo Exercise 2 Book 3 - Master Photo Lighting - Soft Light Introduction Dynamic Range Narrowing The Lighting Ratio Exposing For The Extremes Dynamic Range Hierarchy Why Care About Dynamic Range? High Dynamic Range (HDR) Photography

Shadows Shadows Determine What Type Of Light You Should Use Spotlights When You Don’t Want Shadows! When You DO Want Shadows Deciding On Hard Or Soft Light

Soft Light Soft Light Defined The Photography Diffuser - A Portable Cloud Hard And Soft Light From The Same Source! Soft Light Advantage The Umbrella The Softbox

Make Your Own Softbox Test Your New Softbox! Other Soft Light Options

Composition Composition Defined Framing Vignette

Shape Size Space Mood Diagonals Symmetry Clutter

Photo Exercise Book 4 - Photo Mastery - Shadows, Form And Texture Introduction Light Makes Shadow Color Temperature - Kelvin Scale Light Meters Reflected Light Meter Problems With Reflected Light Incident Light Meter

Ambient Light Ambient Light Qualities Shadows From Hard Ambient Light Soft Ambient Light Shadows

The Main/Key Light Planning The Shadow Squinting Raccoon Eyes Do You HATE Those Pesky Shadows?

Shadows Define Form Vital - write this in your notebook! The Fill Light Learning Photography Lighting Techniques!

Photo Exercise - 1 Photo Exercise - 2 Fixing Problem Areas Shadow Lighting Patterns Split Light Loop Light Butterfly Light Texture Requires Shadow!

Glare How to fix eyeglass glare? Red Eye

Photo Exercise - 3 Observation training Your final exercise

Other Books By Dan Eitreim Fiction: Non-Fiction Book Bundles:

Other Useful - Non Photography - E-books

Thank You Disclaimer

Book 1 - Master Photo Lighting - Light 101 By Dan Eitreim

Introduction Message From The Author

Hello, I’m Dan Eitreim and I’ve been shooting photographs professionally for over 20 years. Before we get started, let me tell you a bit about me. Getting stunning images is almost automatic for me now, but it wasn’t always like that! I remember struggling to figure out what all the buttons and dials on my camera were for, and I remember the frustration of not being able to shoot the type of images I knew it was possible to produce. I think I own just about every photo technique book available and believe me, there is a lot of misinformation and downright useless information out there. Most photo books are written - not to really teach you anything new - but to show off the author’s photographs! In this series of e-books, I’ve tried my best to avoid that pitfall. While there are a lot of my own photos in here, there are also a lot of stock photos. The idea is to use the photos to demonstrate a point, not to show off my work.

Simple system

I’ve developed a simple, systematic approach that ANYONE can easily master to start shooting better photos – TODAY! Once you’ve completed this training lesson along your photo journey, “Master Photo Lighting... Light 101”, don’t lose your momentum! Keep reading the next volume in the Master Photo Lighting bundle... Master Photo Lighting - Hard Light

Btw - If you haven’t yet gotten a copy of Volume 1 - “7 Secrets To Creating Stunning Photos!”, it’s a freebie! but, it’s not listed with Amazon, check it out here:

http://www.OnTargetPhotoTraining.com It’s time YOU put the “WOW” factor into your photos. Let’s get started!

**********

Aperture Let’s recap a little bit. In our previous On Target Photo Training lesson, “Master Photo Aperture” we discussed the aperture. For many of us, the aperture is a confusing subject somewhat akin to Voodoo! But when we break it down to its individual components… it all becomes very clear and easy to comprehend. The aperture is nothing more than a hole that lets light into the camera. The light striking the film or digital sensor is what makes our photograph.

The major issue that we are dealing with is to make sure we have the right amount of light. If we have too little, the photo is underexposed. If we have too much, the photo is overexposed. So the amount of light the hole (aperture) is letting in, is our first concern. There are several ways to manipulate the amount of light going through the aperture (hole). It can be done through adjusting the actual size of the hole, through the shutter speed, and through the “speed” of the film or ISO setting on our digital camera. Why would we bother with these other options? Why not just set the aperture to the right size and be done with it?

Here’s why…

Depth Of Field We’ve discovered that not only does the aperture control the amount of light entering the camera to give us a proper exposure, it also controls the depth of field. The depth of field is the amount of the photograph that will be in acceptable focus in the finished print. This is an important creative option. A larger aperture lets in more light and has a shallow depth of field. A small aperture lets in less light but has a greater depth of field.

By the way… if you are ever shooting a timepiece with hands, particularly if you

are trying to SELL the timepiece… the top pros recommend that you always do it with the hands at 10 and 2 o’clock. I’m not sure why, but if I had to guess I’d say it’s because the balance seems to be more pleasing to the eye. The sales results are undisputed.

Other benefits of controlling the depth of field… By letting the background be completely blurry (large aperture), we are able to isolate our subject against a nondistracting background. This will focus our viewer’s eye on the main subject - the star - of our photo.

Or, at the other extreme, we can have the photo be in sharp focus (small aperture) all the way to the horizon. This is useful if we are shooting landscapes where we want everything in the scene to be in focus.

Or, we can have the focus fall somewhere in between the two extremes.

Depth of field is one of our most valuable creative options and you should know exactly what you want the finished result to be - before you press the shutter button. (Pre-visualize and write it down in your notebook!)

The F Stop In setting our aperture, when we see the cryptic numbers on the adjusting ring, numbers like - 2.8, 5.6 or 11, it is the size of the hole that is being measured.

We learned that the f stands for function and that the numbers are a mathematical term we can think of as a fraction. In reality it’s a bit more complex but if you think of the F stop as a simple fraction, you will do fine.

Because it is a fraction and not a whole number, it creates a lot of confusion because it is counter-intuitive. The smaller the f number, the bigger the hole. The bigger the f number used, the smaller the hole. So rather than think of the numbers as 2.8 or 5.6 or 11- think of them as 1/2.8 or 1/5.6 or 1/11. Larger f numbers, like f32 (1/32) represent a very small hole - which will give us a very deep depth of field. The smaller numbers represent a larger hole and less depth of field. In most cases, the f-stop is adjusted by turning a ring on the lens. This can be a dangerous situation! Since we are constantly changing the focus on our lenses (as well as actually changing lenses), it’s easy to accidentally turn the ring and change the aperture.

Another danger zone is that since most of us are so used to shooting with the camera on automatic, we get out of the habit of checking our settings. While we are shooting away, we have to remember to use the B-A-S-E formula before each shot so that we catch it if we HAVE accidentally changed the settings. The B-A-S-E formula is explained in Volume 1: “7 Secrets To Creating Stunning Photos!” You can get a free copy at: http://www.OnTargetPhotoTraining.com It’s easy to become complacent and not check before each shot, but the first time an important session is ruined by a simple mistake… you’ll be more eager to start checking.

Shutter Speed And Aperture Combinations We learned that there are MANY different shutter/aperture combinations that can equal the same “correct” amount of light striking the film or sensor for a properly exposed shot. And we saw a simple chart showing us how it works to determine the settings: ALL of the below combinations of shutter and aperture will give us exactly the same amount of light for our film or digital sensor. The difference to be noted is that the depth of field will be different for each one. Changing the lens, or moving closer or further away from the subject makes a difference too!

Finally, we did some experimenting with aperture so that we could learn how to control our background and learn what settings will produce what. I hope you’ve been keeping up with the experiments and with your notebook. All of this is a basic groundwork for the truly amazing shots you’ll soon be getting. Your notebook should be showing the results of all your experimenting and will be a valuable guide in the future when you want to create a certain “look” or “effect” and you aren’t quite sure of your settings. The more detail you put into your notebook, the more value it will have in the future. Don’t skimp on this step.

If you HAVEN’T gone through the last lesson in the On Target Photo Training course - to master your aperture - you should get it right away! Aperture and the resulting depth of field is a consideration in every shot you will ever do! Master Photo Aperture!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007RP547K Enough of a review! While shutter speed, ISO and aperture are all ways of controlling light, let’s get into how light is measured and the various kinds of light we will be dealing with.

Light! According to Wikipedia, the word “photograph” was coined in 1839 by Sir John Herschel and is based on the Greek words: (phos) “light” and (graphê) “representation by means of lines” or “drawing”. Together they mean “drawing with light”.

Sir John Herschel Drawing with light! This is the most basic - yet a very comprehensive - definition of photography! We ARE drawing with light, and everything we do - from choosing a camera, deciding which lenses to buy, deciding on the shutter speed, aperture setting and so on, all boils down to light and how we plan to capture it on film or digital sensor. So, it would be a good idea for us to understand light in all of its various forms!

Additive Light

In photography, we are mostly concerned with additive light. What this means is a total absence of light is black. Then we add red, green and blue. As these colors intermix, we get all the various hues. For example red light ADDED to blue will give us purple. As we change the amounts of each color, the shades differ. When all three colors are added together, we get white. In our various photo projects we will be working with incandescent light, ambient light, on camera flashes and studio strobes. We’ll hear light called by many names - incident, reflected, warm, cool, soft, hard and so on. We’ll be using it as is, modifying it, reflecting it, measuring it, losing it and adjusting it. We’ll look at lighting patterns such as; narrow light, broad light, split light, loop light, butterfly, Rembrandt light and many others. In other words, light is a pretty big deal!

In fact, in photography, light and by extension the absence of it (shadow), is the ONLY deal! It’s what photography is all about! First, let’s think about how light appears to our eye versus how it appears to our camera. Light comes in many colors, ranging all the way from black (no light at all), through red, orange, yellow white and blue. (And all the hues in between.) The colors change as the temperature of the light changes. The “color temperature” is the first lighting concept we should understand.

Color Temperature The Kelvin Light Temperature Scale In photography, we measure a light source’s “color temperature” with the Kelvin scale. Sorry, but I have to get into some pretty dry and boring stuff for a few minutes. It won’t last long, I promise…

For those of you that think you don’t need to know this stuff, or will never have a use for it - you do and you will. As a side note, for several years there was a television game show called: “Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?”. It starred Jeff Foxworthy. I remember seeing a contestant who was asked a question about what temperature scale is used to measure the color temperature of light. He said Celsius. And it cost him $250,000! As a photographer, YOU know it is the Kelvin scale (not Celsius) and YOU would have won the money - so let me extrapolate that out and say this lesson is worth a quarter million dollars!

How Color Of Light is Determined Here is how the temperature/color is determined:

Assume you have a totally black object. At room temperature, this object does not give off ANY light! It’s completely black.

Now, let’s light a fire underneath our black object. As it starts to heat up, it begins to glow.

Think of this like an electric burner on a stove. It starts out black, but when you turn on the heat - it gets hot and starts to glow a bright red/orange that we all associate with heat. But, it doesn’t simply go from a cold nothing (black) - to the (red/orange) heat we use in cooking. It passes through countless intermediary steps. There is a build up

of heat. At first it will have a soft, barely visible glow that will get brighter and brighter as the coil gets hotter and hotter. The actual color of the light changes as the coil increases in temperature. There ARE temperatures that create a light that isn’t visible to the human eye, but we won’t get into those right now. For now, we just want to learn what color temperatures we’ll typically run across in our photo adventures and how to deal with them. For the scientists among you, here is what a chart of the Kelvin temperature of light looks like…

If you can look at THAT without getting intimidated, I freely admit you know more about light and color temperature measurement than I do! Fortunately, there’s an easier to understand graph. Basically, it’s just a representation of the curved line in the above image. Remember, the Kelvin temperature scale is simply the color temperature at which our fictional black object is glowing. Here is a more understandable graph that will nicely show the various color temperatures…

What does it all mean? Basically when you are seeing a red or yellowish light, it’s at a lower temperature than a white or blue light. The normal household light bulb glows at around 3200 degrees Kelvin. Look at the scale above and you will see what I mean. (We refer to household light bulbs as incandescent light.)

The sun at noon is somewhere around 5600 degrees Kelvin, which is a white light.

In the late afternoon, the light has to pass through a lot more of the atmosphere and the color temperature starts dropping. The light starts getting that nice reddish glow we associate with those gorgeous sunsets. Now you know why.

Pop Quiz You get a new telescope and look up into the night sky. You see white stars, blue ones and red ones. Which are the hottest? Which are the coolest? (Check the chart!)

Ok, so now you know that the color of light is determined by the temperature. Here is what all this means to you…

Types And Uses Of Light The three major types of light you will be dealing with are, “ambient” (natural) light, “incandescent light” and “studio strobe” lights. Examples would be - the sun is an ambient light, a typical household light bulb is an incandescent light and your “on camera flash” falls into the strobe category.

Ambient Light The phrase “Ambient Light” simply means light that it is already there. It is the available light in the environment. In other words, you aren’t adding any light. It could be the sun, the moon, or even a light bulb. Note: While the lightbulb is actually an incandescent light - as long as it was already there and turned on (and we aren’t adding any light), we’ll consider it as ambient light. “Ambient” light is a catch all phrase that includes the sun. If we consider the sun, it is on all the time so it isn’t a strobe slight or an incandescent light. It isn’t even a fluorescent light because the gasses from the sun are being burned, not fluorescing. Going back to the definition of “Ambient Light” - it is light that is already there! It could be the sun, a candle, tungsten light bulbs or even fluorescent lights! Just so they are already there and not light sources you moved into the scene for the sake of the photo, they all qualify. Here are several samples of Ambient Light…

Incandescent Light

We define incandescent light as a source of electric light that works using incandescence. (Well duh!) Incandescence is a general term for heat-driven light emissions. In other words in normal household lights the light filament heats up and starts glowing - emitting light. The headlights in our car would be an incandescent light too - the filament heats up and glows.

The filament is usually made of tungsten, so incandescent lights are often referred to as tungsten lights.

Another major trait of incandescent lights is that when they are in use, they are

constantly “on”. A strobe or on camera flash is only “on” during the actual time it is actually strobing. (Is strobing a word?) The fact that it is constantly on is a big benefit to photographers because they can actually see the effects of the light and shadow. A strobe is too fast and you can only see the results after you print the photo. Since the light is constantly on (during the photo session) we refer to it as a “hot light”. This nomenclature is referring to it being on all the time - not the actual temperature of the light. (But they CAN get pretty hot and have to be handled with care.) With the benefit of being able to see what you are getting with an incandescent light source, why would we ever use a strobe?

Why use a strobe light? Here’s why… Have you ever taken a photograph indoors using just the available - incandescent light? Chances are it turned out to be a sickly looking orange color. Why? Because our household lights generally heat up to, and glow at, about 3200 degrees Kelvin. The orange color CAN be filtered and adjusted for, but it requires having the right kind of film or the right kind of filters when shooting with a film camera. Or properly adjusting your white balance when shooting digital. Another drawback is that incandescent lights tend to be less powerful than strobe lighting and you may not have enough light to capture the image - or you may have to adjust the shutter speed to a really slow, unacceptable level.

The Filters In Our Minds When shooting with incandescent lights we often see the light (with our eyes) as a completely different color than our camera sees it… Even though the light in the scene appeared as white light to our eyes, our photo has an unattractive yellowish/orange color cast. We normally don’t notice the light as being that color because our brains do what they can to filter out the color cast and “see” the light as a usable white. Our brain has built in filters that will take the yellow/orange light from incandescent bulbs and make it appear to be white light. We never notice the color cast - but film and digital sensors don’t have these automatic filters. That’s why our photos will often have a color cast that we weren’t expecting. Most film is balanced to record sunlight at 5600 degrees (around noon) as white. If you have the white balance on a digital camera set so that it records white using sunlight at noon, you will get the same orange color cast color as film if you later shoot indoors with an incandescent light. (It CAN be a creative choice!)

BTW – the reverse is true too! Film that is balanced to record tungsten (incandescent) light as white (or digital cameras with that same white balance) will show everything outside at noon as a shade of blue!

This magnificent computer in our heads adjusts the world around us to suit our circumstances. When we objectively look at things without the filters of our minds - they frequently appear much different. Have you ever bought a new car and as soon as you did, you start seeing identical ones EVERYWHERE? But, you had never noticed them before? Or possibly you purchased a new sweater - and now notice that EVERYONE else is wearing the same thing? Our mind filtered out that information until it became important to us. Because the filters in our brains adjust to fit our circumstances, they focus on some things and disregard others! We would quickly go insane if we actually “noticed” everything around us and gave it all equal weight. We pay more attention to some things than to others, and our brains “fix” the color of light coming into our eyes to make it as useful as possible. That’s why, when we shoot a photograph, the camera records a scene that is frequently very different from what we saw - or more correctly, noticed - with our eyes. There are several reasons for this, but the one we’re concerned with right now is the light’s color temperature and why it shows up differently in the camera than what we remember seeing. Remember… film and your digital sensor’s defaults are manufactured to be

properly exposed at the color temperature of the sun at midday - approximately 5600 degrees Kelvin (white light). The color temperature of household light bulbs comes in at around 3200 (yellow light), and that is where the color cast in our photograph comes from. BTW - I KNOW that I mention film all the time and no one is using it anymore! Don’t bother writing to tell me that! First - there aren’t many, but there actually ARE some photographers out there that still use film. Second, the principles are the same for digital cameras and it is important to understand them!

Fixing A Color Cast There are a number of fixes! You could use an on camera flash. They are designed to flash a white light at 5600 degrees and will overwhelm the yellowish incandescent light.

If you still shoot film, you can buy film specially designed to operate at 3200 degrees Kelvin. With this film there is a built in bluish cast which offsets the yellow cast of the light bulb. The two color casts work together to equal a white light.

In the digital world, the same thing is done with your white balance. If you set your white balance to record white at 3200 degrees, you are in effect creating a bluish cast. You could also put a colored gel over the lights to balance out the color - or a colored filter in front of the lens. Remember, in previous lessons I’ve suggested that whenever you encounter a problem in your photography, try to figure out at least three solutions!

By the way, florescent lights - while they are constantly on - are not technically incandescent lights. They heat up a gas and it fluoresces. This give off a greenish cast that is impossible to predict because almost all the bulbs are radically different.

If at all possible, stay away from shooting with them as your main source of light. If you MUST - there are filters designed for offsetting the greenish cast of fluorescent lights - they are pinkish in color, but since all fluorescent tubes are different and cast a slightly different hue of green, the filters aren’t very effective.

Strobe Lighting Strobe lighting is NOT considered as incandescent or ambient light. According to Wikipedia… “Strobe lights usually use flashtubes with energy supplied from a capacitor, an energy storage device much like a battery, but capable of charging and releasing energy much faster. Recently, some strobe lights have been found to use rectified mains electricity and no capacitors at all. In a capacitor based strobe light, the capacitor is charged up to around 300V. Once the capacitor has been charged, a small amount of power is diverted into a trigger transformer, a small transformer with a high turns ratio, which generates a weak, but high voltage spike required to ionize the xenon gas in a flash tube. An arc is created inside the tube, which acts as a bridge for the much bigger pulse to flow down later. Arcs present almost a direct short circuit, allowing the capacitors to quickly release their energy into the arc. This rapidly heats the xenon

gas, creating an extremely bright plasma discharge, which is seen as a flash.” Whew! Don’t bother memorizing that! Just know that a studio strobe or an on camera flash fires off a very fast (milliseconds) pulse of light with a color temperature of 5600 degrees Kelvin which is a white light.

Why use a studio strobe or on camera flash rather than an ambient light source? First - the color is balanced to be a white light - there is no color cast to be dealt with. Second - it is generally more powerful and the output strength can be adjusted to give you more control over shutter speed and aperture. And thereby, you have more creative control. As mentioned before, strobe lighting is a bit harder to work with because it is NOT a hot light. By that I mean it is not constantly “on”. Because the flash is so fast, it is impossible to actually see the end result - whether or not the light is properly positioned and/or strong enough is mostly guesswork (unless you carefully meter the light output).

The Modeling Light One way that studio strobes have of dealing with these problems is to have an incandescent light built into the strobe unit. Generally, the tungsten light is in the

center with the flash tubes arrayed around it. This way, the incandescent light is used to see and position the light and shadows. Then, when the strobe is fired, it overwhelms the incandescent light, but will have the same light and shadow patterns. This type of incandescent light is referred to as a modeling light. Here is a sample of a strobe with a modeling light…

On Camera flashes are also considered as strobe lighting but, of course, they don’t have a built in modeling light!

Flash Photo Secrets!

Here Is A Flash Photography Photo Tip That Will Save You Money - And Get You More Shots! Your on camera flash has a limited range! Some of them are a tiny ten feet and others are more powerful, but they all have their limits! Have you ever gone to a big sporting event? Or even seen one on television? If so, did you notice all the flashes going off in the stands? It’s amazing! I particularly enjoy watching the foot races during the summer Olympics. As the runner goes by each section of the grandstands, thousands of flashes go off. It’s almost like watching a “wave” of light following the runner around the track. “So what?” you say. Were you aware that an on camera flash can’t reach that far? It isn’t helping AT ALL! (Even the top quality - expensive - ones!)

OK, so now you are thinking, “No big deal,” it isn’t helping if it isn’t making it to the subject, but it isn’t hurting either. Actually, it IS hurting! On automatic when you enable the flash to fire, your camera knows the flash isn’t going to reach the subject, but it tries its best to do your bidding by making sure every flash is at full power! Here is one way it can hurt you... When you shoot with the flash firing at full power, it completely drains the charge. Then it takes your flash a while to recharge. Trust me when I say, the best photo opportunities ALWAYS appear while you are waiting for the flash to recharge. And you miss them! Any wedding photographer who says he or she hasn’t missed a lot of great shots (sometimes even essential shots) while they were waiting for their flash to recharge is lying. Some of them even go so far as to carry around a battery pack attached to their belt! This holds a charge and offsets the problem of a dead flash but, they are expensive and a pain in the posterior to carry around. Another great way that firing your flash at full power - when it isn’t helping the photo in any way - will cost you... You are using up your flash unit’s batteries at an alarming rate!

As mentioned, great shots come and go while you are waiting for the flash unit to recharge - but you will miss even MORE great photos if the photo opportunity happens while you are changing batteries! Or even worse, while you are dead in the water because you DON’T HAVE any fresh batteries! Later, when the stars are giving out autographs, or you are on a tour of the stadium, or the bride is about to be kissed - and you can’t get the shot because your batteries are drained... Well, now you know why. Remember this photo tip... Turn off your flash when you are more than about tentwenty feet from the subject, it won’t help. Stop cursing your camera for going through batteries so fast! If you only use your flash when it is going to help and actually give you better photography, you will save money AND get more great shots!

How And Why To Diffuse Your On Camera Flash! I was recently asked a great question about how to diffuse an on camera flash. This is an important concept to understand - not just how, but why! Here is the question I was asked... “When using flash inside a room with low ceiling and white walls, I understand how to bounce the flash to get soft light. But if the ceiling and walls are not white, how do you soften the light without using an off camera flash.” This is a great question because it brings out several issues! First - By off camera flash, he is referring to studio lighting or being able to take

the actual flash off the camera. But what if you don’t have any studio lights and your flash either won’t come off the camera, or it will, but you don’t have the necessary cords etc., to use it that way? Second - Why would you want to soften the light in the first place, and what do we even mean by softening the light? Third - How does the color of the walls and ceiling affect the light? Fourth - How can we soften it? If you are shooting with an undiffused flash, any kind of flash (strobe) - not just on the camera, it has a tendency to be very harsh. It makes deep shadows on the face and so on. We call this “hard light”. But that’s not all, it makes shadows on the walls and ceilings and the color of the light tends to be cold, harsh and unforgiving. There ARE times when this is perfect and just what you are after, but not usually. Particularly when you are shooting with a flash unit on your camera. To soften the light and make it less harsh, we want to diffuse it in some way. To best illustrate light diffusion, go outside on a bright, sunny, cloudless, day and observe your shadow. You’ll notice that it is dark in color and has a sharp edge.

This is caused by the intensity of the light source (the sun) and its size relative to the subject. If you think about it, the sun is pretty tiny way up there in the sky! Now go out on an overcast day, or just wait until a cloud comes between you and the sun. Now the sunlight is entering the back-side (top) of the cloud and as it passes through it is bouncing all over the place. When it comes out of the bottom of the cloud - and hits us - the light is not all coming out in one place. It is coming out fairly evenly across the whole bottom surface of the cloud. Now our light source becomes the cloud, not the sun. And it is huge! It’s a lot bigger than the sun was. It possibly stretches from horizon to horizon! Now look at our shadow. It is no longer such a deep color. It is now more of a gray than black and it isn’t so harsh. Rather than hard edges, the edges of the shadow are now softer and less defined. They tend to fade away rather than just go from deep black to nothing.

This is diffusion. It softens the light and makes it larger in relation to the subject. That’s why you see studio photographers using softboxes and shooting through umbrellas. It’s an “in studio” attempt at replicating a cloud. BTW - Hard shadows aren’t necessarily a bad thing, just something we need to be aware of, want, and plan for…

Back to our on camera flash... Since most of our problems are being caused by the size of the flash relative to the subject, we need to make it bigger. Small lights cause sharp shadows, big lights cause softer shadows. Higher end, on-camera, flash units have the ability to swivel the flash head up

and/or to the side, while remaining on the camera. Now, rather than shooting straight at the subject with this tiny, harsh light source, we swivel the head and bounce the light off the wall or ceiling. This makes the light a LOT bigger and solves most of our problems.

But, what if the walls and ceiling are not white? Don’t bounce off of them. The light will pick up the color and reflect it onto the subject’s face. Either move your model to another location or diffuse the light in another manner. They DO sell tiny softboxes that you attach to your on-camera flash, or white plastic covers you put over the flash’s lens - but if you don’t have one of them, the easiest and most popular way is to tape some sort of diffusion material over the flash’s lens.

Tracing paper works well and you can increase or decrease the amount of diffusion by the number of layers of tracing paper you use. None of these is ideal. The best way to diffuse a flash is to swivel it and bounce the light of the wall or ceiling and into the subject. But they will work in a pinch. Another bounce option would be to use a large white reflector. Bounce the light off that rather than the wall.

Using and diffusing on camera flash isn’t difficult, but it’s one of those photo tips that we tend to overlook - but, just has to be done! Next, let’s discuss lighting faces.

Lighting Photo Portraits - The Basics In lighting portraits it helps to know the function of all the various lights involved. They are considered as basics because they WORK to create great portraits and every photographer should thoroughly understand them...

The main light The main light’s function is to provide the overall scene’s lighting. This is the one that you will typically meter for and use for your exposure settings. To be a main source, it doesn’t have to actually be a studio strobe. It could be ambient light, your on camera flash, or even a reflector bouncing illumination into the face. It doesn’t matter what the light source is! BTW - while the main light is usually the brightest light in the set, it doesn’t have to be! Just so it is the light you are basing your exposure settings on. To make your subject appear 3D rather than flat and lifeless, your main light should be off to the side so that shadows - on the opposing side of the face - are created. It’s the shadows that create form, texture and depth. Depending on the strength (and size) of your main light, the shadow area could be very dark and intense. While that may be the look we want, generally this is not ideal. We will want to lighten the shadow so that details in the shadow side of the face can be seen.

The fill light Enter the fill light. Again, this can be an additional studio light, ambient light, on camera flash or even a reflector bouncing light from the main light and back into the shadow areas. The intensity of the fill light - relative to the main light - is what will determine the depth and intensity of the shadows. A standard rule of thumb is to have the fill light be about half the intensity of the main, but let your creative vision be your guide.

Separation light

The third light is the background or separation light. It too can be any light source. This light is used to separate the subject from the background. It can be turned away from the subject and directly onto the background, or turned towards the subject creating what’s called a rim (or halo) light. If it is placed higher than the subject, it can become a hair light. This is the standard three light set up used in most studios around the world.

Creative Lighting Now, let’s discuss the basics of portrait lighting in a bit more detail… I will be repeating some of the previously mentioned lighting concepts for clarity. Light for photography doesn’t HAVE to be an actual light! It can be ANY type of illumination! Or not even a physical light at all! You could have your model positioned near the wall of a white building, or even in the reflection from a large white truck!

It can be an ambient light source, incandescent light, a strobe or even a simple reflector! Those work lights do well too!

The good news is, once you’ve mastered one source of illumination, you’re set! They all work the same way. As mentioned, most studio photographers like to use a 3 strobe set-up for the vast majority of their portraits. This is the most basic set-up and should be the first one you learn. But one portrait lighting concept that many beginners/amateurs don’t realize - like I’ve mentioned - an illumination source doesn’t necessarily need to be an actual studio strobe. Or even an actual light for that matter.

Sure we would all like to have the latest studio strobes with all the various bells and whistles, but it just isn’t necessary. Here’s what I mean... The first light in a 3 light set-up is called the main or key light. This is the one that you establish first. You will take your meter reading from this light and adjust all your other lights accordingly. The main light could be the sun, it could be one of those mechanic’s work lights (the ones you see hanging from a hook under the hood of your car), you could even use your car headlights or a simple flashlight.

As an experiment in lighting, I had a girl lying on a black table. I then turned off all the lights in the room and set my camera’s shutter to stay open. Then (in the dark), I walked over to her and with a FLASHLIGHT I slowly let the light travel up and down her body. It’s one of my favorite shots! Try it! Put your wallet away and learn the lighting basics with whatever is available. Once you have a thorough understanding of illumination, how it works and how to manipulate it - THEN - is the time to buy expensive studio strobes. Position your main light to be at about 45degrees between the model and the camera position. Then position it to be about 45 degrees higher than the subject.

This will create a shadow on one side of the face. It’s a good thing - that’s what makes your subject appear 3D rather than flat and lifeless. If the light source is stationary - like the sun - obviously you would move the model into position rather than moving the light. The second light is called the fill light. It is used to lighten the shadow side of the face, so that detail is visible. It can be a studio strobe, an on camera flash, a mirror or some other type of reflector. Position it either behind you and above the camera position, or closer to the model and opposite to the main light. The intensity (amount of light) and how much of the shadow you want to fill in is where your creative vision takes over. The third light is the separation light and is put behind the subject. It is used to light the backdrop or it can be turned around and used to light the back of the subject (rim light) or their hair (hair light). It too can be a mirror, reflector or a light. In the below sample, I used my on-camera flash as the key light and the sun as a separation light.

With the judicious use of mirrors and other reflectors, 1 main light can be the only light source for a very complex 5 light set! Experiment with the sun as your light source and several reflectors as your fill, separation and accent lights. Once you have mastered the use and positioning of your various light sources, you will be in a better position to know what you want

when it comes time for you to shell out the big bucks for studio strobes! On the subject of spending big bucks for studio strobes…

In Studio Portrait Lighting - Spending More IS Better! Most of us who’ve been bitten by the “Photo Bug” eventually reach the point where we want to move our portraits to the next level and buy some studio portrait lighting. But there is one potential pitfall...

Good lights cost a bundle! We know that even the most basic portrait lighting setup will require at least three lights, but shazaam good ones are a lot more than we want to (or can) spend. It’s easy to spend several thousand dollars - just on a three light studio portrait lighting system. So, we wind up buying some cheap knock-off brand. We figure they are good enough for now and we’ll get the better ones later. (When we have more money to invest.) Think about it, do you really think you will EVER go back and get the better quality lights? Actually, YOU WILL! But not because the time is right and it is more financially convenient. Nope, you’ll end up buying the more expensive ones because you will soon realize that the cheap lights just won’t do the job, aren’t as efficient and keep breaking down. Or simply aren’t capable of working as advertised. In other words, they are a pain in the patootie to use! So, you end up not using them and they sit around gathering dust. Your total investment was wasted money. And your photo quality as well as your photo education suffers.

What to do? When the time comes to start getting your own studio portrait lighting system, buy the absolute best you can buy. If you must, spend your whole wad of cash on only one light! Learn to use it well, use reflectors to bounce light into your subject and replace the other two lights. Once you’ve totally mastered ONE light (and saved up some

money) buy a second one and so on. As previously mentioned, I’ve seen one light (and several reflectors) lighting an entire portrait set - duplicating a 5 light system. One good light used well, is better than a cheap, three light system that’s not used at all. Buying the best quality - ALWAYS - pays off in the end, particularly in photo gear. Your lights will last you years, if not decades and will be a joy to work with and to own. Plus quality photo gear holds its value very well… if you ever want to sell; you can do so easily and at a higher price. Try building your studio portrait lighting system this way...you’ll be glad you did.

Photography Lighting Techniques - 3 Vital Tips Imagine how terrific it would feel to be able to pick up your camera, shoot any subject matter you want - and get jaw dropping, awesome photos - every time. All it takes is an understanding of some basic photography lighting situations and techniques! Three beginning photography lighting techniques that you really need to understand are: 1. Color: If you’ve ever photographed a landscape that looked dull, flat and lifeless - here’s what you do... Examine the COLOR of the light in your photo. It is a common mistake to shoot outdoor photos in the middle of the day. Set your alarm and roll out of bed just before dawn, then go to your site... you’ll get shots with a soft, delicate pink touch.

Or, shoot at sunset and get a landscape covered in orange and gold!

The light glancing off your subject will create gorgeous highlights and deep, defining shadows. It is the shadows that will make the subject appear 3D and POP! Once the sun dips below the horizon, you will start getting purple hues… this can be the most beautiful time to shoot, but most photographers have already packed up and gone home!

2. Intensity: Trying to get a good photo of a friend? Is the sun beating down on them - causing unflatteringly intense highlights and deep, dark shadows? Do they have shadows under the eyes (we call this raccoon eyes)? Keep in mind that the film or digital sensor in your camera “sees” in a much narrower dynamic range than your eyes.

Frequently where we can see detail in the shadows, your camera just sees black. At the same time, when we see detail in the highlights; the camera shows pure,

featureless white. Move your subject into the shade. This will lower the dynamic range between highlight and shadow and make it easier for your camera to record detail (and it eliminates the raccoon eyes problem!

3. Directionality: The direction the light is coming from is another key factor. Any directionality can be either good or bad. It can be used to accent features or hide them. Study your subject and use the direction of the light creatively. Don’t just fire away and hope for the best. If you have light glancing in from the side... it will create long shadows that will magnify form and shape. Like muscle. For a body builder it’s great. They look much more muscular with a glancing light from the side.

However, for a teenager, light glancing in from the side can be a nightmare. Every pimple is accented and looks HUGE.

For a scarred or pimply face you would use light shining directly into the face. But… Light coming directly into the face can be a blessing or a problem. It can make your subject squint, or it can fill in wrinkles and visually take off ten years!

Back light can beautifully rim your subject or cause lens flare and ruin the shot.

Understanding how the directionality of light will affect your subject is as important as knowing how to turn on your camera. Your subject will determine if a certain photography lighting technique is right or wrong!

Photo Exercise 1 1. Grab your camera and notebook. 2. Set your alarm for an hour or so before dawn. Yes, I like to sleep too. But, you DO want to be a better photographer, right? 3. Pick an outdoor subject for this photo study, something like a bridge or large rock formation or a white wall or building. Something white or light in color that won’t move or substantially change throughout the day. It’s probably better if you choose your subject the day before, that way you won’t be wasting any time in the morning. Be sure to pick a day when the sun is likely to be out. 4. At the first glimmer of light, write in your notebook what you think the color cast will be, and then start shooting. For this exercise you can use the automatic setting if you want. Get a shot about every half hour for 2 or 3 hours. Be sure to take the various photographs with the same lens and from exactly the same location. Use a tripod. 5. Go out to breakfast and enjoy the rest of your morning. 6. Do the same thing at noon. Shoot the same subject, from the same place, etc. Start at 11:00 am and shoot until around 1:00 pm. 7. Go have a siesta. 8. Shoot your same subject starting an hour or two before sunset and continue until there isn’t ANY light left. (At least an hour after the sun drops below the horizon.) 9. Print the photos and paste them into your notebook. I think you will be amazed at the major changes in the way your subject looks! Can you see why professionals like to use the early morning and late evening light? 10. Pick a different subject and do it again. Understanding what the different colors of light will do to a photo is one of the biggest differences between a professional and a beginner. The more often you do this experiment, the faster you will learn how to control light (and your creativity.) Try it on an overcast day, what changes?

Metering

Now that we understand the Kelvin temperature scale and why the color of light changes throughout the day, we need to get into making sure we have enough of it (light) for a proper exposure - no more, no less. Obviously, the amount of light we need is going to change based on our aperture, and shutter speed combinations. Plus the color of the light and its intensity changes throughout the day, sometimes from minute to minute. So we need some way of measuring the available light. There are two basic types of light meter. There is the reflected light meter and the incident light meter.

Reflected Light Meters Unless you are REALLY into photography, the reflected light meter is the one you will most likely be using the most… So, let’s define and talk about reflected light meters. All “in-camera” meters are reflected light meters. As you undoubtedly learned in grade school, when we look at something, what we are seeing is the light that is reflected off the object and into our eyes. Photography works the same way. When we look at something through a camera viewfinder we are seeing the light

reflected off the subject and into the camera. Built in camera meters “read” and measure this reflected light. But, there are problems that can and do lead to incorrect readings. The makers of light meters made some assumptions when they designed and manufactured the reflected light meter. First, they assume that the average person will be shooting an average scene with various colors and reflected light values. Based on this assumption, they’ve designed meters to “read” the total amount of reflected light from the entire scene (as seen through the lens) and then average it out. Then we set the exposure based on this average. It seems like a reasonable assumption (that most scenes have both light and dark areas) and this average setting is OK in an average scene. But the average becomes a problem in scenes with un-average light reflectance. The light average is calculated to be half way between white and black. In the world of printing, the color exactly half way between white and black is called 18% gray. It is widely touted in all the photography books and literature that reflectance meters are set to average the light in a scene to read at 18% gray.

Here’s something you will probably not read anywhere else… In reality (though you will seldom read this in other photo books) the meters are set at 12% gray which is about ½ stop brighter than 18% gray.

This is a fine point and heavily debated. The truth of the matter is that most people wouldn’t really see much difference. Particularly when shooting film. The film’s exposure latitudes are more than able to compensate. I want to teach you how to get stunning photos, not start a debate, so in all the rest of my discussions - to avoid confusion - I’ll refer to it as 18% gray like all the other photo books do. But, YOU will know the difference. BTW - If you calibrate your meter, it won’t matter. Calibrating Your “In Camera” Reflected Light Meter

How To Calibrate A Film Camera’s Meter If you want to calibrate the meter in your film camera, you’ll need to shoot a series of slides. Slide (positive) film is much more sensitive to exposure values than negative film. Plus, it isn’t adjusted at the photo lab. What you see is what you get. (Negative film IS automatically adjusted by the developers at ALL photo labs!) Again - to calibrate our meter, we need to see the shot as is with no adjustments, so slide film is best. Take a picture of someone holding an 18% gray card (you can buy one from Amazon or in most camera stores). Have them hold the 18% gray card at about a 30 degree angle between the light source and the lens axis. This will insure that you are really getting the reflected light.

As a quick side bar: good cameras have meters that have various settings. They

can be used to read the entire scene in the viewfinder, a center weighted scene or a specific spot. The entire scene measures and averages ALL the light in the entire scene. In center weighted, they assume that the middle of the photo is the most important, so they give more credence or “weight” to the light reflecting off the objects in the center of the frame. In spot metering, it measures and averages only the reflected light from the actual spot you select. If your meter is reading the entire scene, it is good for general photo usage but not for calibrating. Same issue with center weighted. In calibrating, we only want the meter to concern itself with the light reflecting off the 18% gray card. If you have a choice, it is best to use the spot metering setting. If you don’t have a choice, move in close and fill the frame with the card. (Be careful that your shadow doesn’t fall on the card.) So, to calibrate… Spot meter off the 18% gray card and shoot a series of photos in 1/3rd stop increments both one full stop above and one full stop below the meter reading. Then do the same thing with your helper holding a Macbeth Color Checker card. (Again, available through Amazon or at most camera stores.) Or do both at the same time. Some (most) Macbeth cards have both the colors and gray scale on one card.

When you get the slides back, carefully examine them and pick the one you like

best, the one that - to you - are closest to the colors in the Macbeth Color Checker card. If your favorite is the one AT the setting your meter suggested, do nothing. Your meter is calibrated to your “eye”. If your favorite is above or below the metered setting, adjust your exposure compensation dial accordingly. For example, if you felt that the best exposed slide was the one that was 1/3rd stop over the metered setting… set the EV dial to +1/3rd and permanently leave it there. If you felt that the best exposed slide was the one that was 1/3rd stop under the metered setting… set the EV dial to -1/3rd and permanently leave it there. You won’t need to do this at every shooting session, just once. Set your exposure compensation setting to reflect the way you want your photos to appear then just leave it alone. To get the exposure values you like best, be sure to ALWAYS use this compensation. Down the road, if you start getting exposures that are out of whack, do the test again. That’s how you will know if your camera’s meter is or isn’t working properly. Or alternatively, if your camera doesn’t have an EV dial, you could compensate by adjusting your film speed - ISO - setting by adding or subtracting a third of a stop.

How To Calibrate A Digital Camera’s Meter If you want to calibrate your digital camera, set up the shoot the same way… 18% gray card, angled at 30 degrees to get the reflected light, and shoot with the same 1/3rd step increments to reach 1 full stop above and below the camera’s meter reading. Then, check your camera’s histogram. (IN your camera, not in Photoshop, they are different.) Select the one that gives you a centered value and set that in your exposure control.

In this way, you will KNOW exactly how your camera meters the scene and

exactly how to get the best exposures. Yes, all this is dry stuff, but like I say, do it once and you’re set forever.

Reflectance Meter Problems As I mentioned before, there ARE problems with meters. All of them. If you were to shoot a scene that was absolutely pure white, the meter would measure the amount of light in the scene - average it out - and set the exposure to 18% gray. Below is what you see with your eyes…

Here is what the camera gives you after converting the scene to 18% gray.

The opposite is true as well…If you were to shoot a scene that was absolutely pure black, the meter would measure the amount of light in the scene and set the exposure to 18% gray. In the two images below, the first one is what you see; the second is what you get after the meter sets the color to 18% gray.

BOTH pure white shots AND pure black shots turn out an identical 18% gray! If you were to shoot a photograph of a pure white piece of paper, and then shoot a photo of a pure black piece of paper - the finished prints would be identical! Here’s a very common problem we see with reflectance meters - the sunset. If you were to shoot a sunset, the intense amount of bright light from the sun hitting the meter would fool it into thinking there is more light than there really is. When the meter sets everything to 18% gray…you end up with a horribly dark, underexposed shot.

The vast majority of amateurs never understand why their sunset photos aren’t as stunning as they remember the actual sunset as being. They blame the camera when in fact it was a misuse of the meter. Here’s how to fix the problem… Meter off the sky in the general direction of the sun but, without the sun actually being in the frame. Then once you have the meter reading, recompose the shot with the sun where you want it. As a reward for slogging through all this boring stuff, you will be shooting sunsets

that will make your friends’ eyes pop!

Calibrating Incident Light Meters The second type of light meter is the incident light meter. (Remember our incamera meter is a reflectance meter.)

Incident light meters are usually hand held. They’re a totally separate piece of equipment from your camera.

An incident light meter reads the amount of light falling onto (incidental to) the subject. Not the amount of light reflected off of it. Some, or probably most of the better hand held meters will allow you the option of doing reflected light metering as well. The white plastic dome you see on the incident meter is there to allow for the shadows falling on the scene. (Faces and etc. are rounded - not flat.) If you want to do a reflectance reading, you would change the dome to be flat. The calibration of an incident meter would be the same as with the reflected light meter. (Take readings and photos of a subject holding the 18% gray card and Macbeth Color chart.) The difference is that once you’ve found the settings you like, rather than adjust your camera’s exposure values you would adjust the exposure values on the meter. The 18% gray averaging is the same concept whether you are using an incident or a reflectance type of meter - but incident meters tend to be more accurate. Since they aren’t fooled by unusual light reflectance off the subject - they allow you to better record the color extremes. For example, in a pure white scene, you would be measuring the actual amount of light hitting the white object, not the unusually bright amount of light being reflected back. Therefore, the actual light is set to 18% gray, when the bright light comes bouncing off the white object and into the camera, it is shown as extra light and it records as white on the film or digital sensor. The opposite is true with a black scene. You are measuring the AMOUNT of light actually getting to the object, not the miniscule amount being reflected into the camera. So shots of a black scene show up as black, not 18% gray. In both cases, you are metering and recording the actual amount of light that is “incident” to the scene. A reading would be done by placing the dome of the meter near the subject and pointing back towards the camera position. While this is more accurate than a reflected meter reading - since you are measuring the light hitting the subject - it may not be possible in some situations.

i.e. If for some reason you are not able to get near to the subject and the light at the camera position is different than the light at the subject’s position. Then a reflectance reading would be necessary.

Some photographers like to take the reading with the meter’s dome pointed at the light source, not at the camera. They believe that by eliminating any influence caused by shadows the reading is more accurate. I tend to agree, but I think it’s a matter of personal preference. When you calibrate your meter, pick the method you prefer (dome pointing at the light source or dome pointing at the camera) then, as long as you use the same method all the time, your shots will be fine. If you are using studio type lighting, it is essential to use an incident light meter because the strobe is so fast that it is impossible to measure the reflectance.

Photo Exercise 2 1. Grab your camera, your notebook and a friend. 2. Have your friend hold a Macbeth color checker and an 18% gray card. (Both are available at any good camera store… or online.) 3. Take a series of shots: 2/3rd below, 1/3rd below, metered setting, 1/3rd above 2/3rd above. Use slide film - not negative film - if you are calibrating a film camera. 4. Pick the slide you think is most accurate or, if using a digital camera, pick the shot that gives you a centered value in the camera’s histogram. Adjust the exposure compensation dial accordingly. 5. Shoot a pure white card and a pure black card and see how they look the same in the end result. 6. Shoot a sunset using the metered settings and then shoot the same sunset in 1/3rd increments (2 full stops) above and below the meter settings. Which one did you like best? Paste this into your notebook along with the settings and adjustments used. 7. What was the approximate Kelvin temperature of the light? Now you know the settings to use whenever you run into a lighting situation with the same approximate Kelvin temperature. 8. Take a trip to the local camera store and take a look at some of the handheld light meters. Ask the salesperson to explain how they work. (You aren’t imposing, they live for this stuff!) We’ve only just touched on the surface of light and how best to capture it in your camera, but if you’ve read this lessons and actually DONE the photo exercises, I’m sure you are already seeing improved photos. Just wait, it gets better! Until next time. Dan Eitreim [email protected] On the subject of learning more…

The section after the last book in this bundle is a list of other training e-books by “On Target Training” (me). Check them out! (TWO of them are FREE!)

Book 2 - Master Photo Lighting - Hard Light By Dan Eitreim

Introduction In the beginning sections of this e-book, we will be reviewing and discussing areas that we have covered before. Many of you haven’t seen the previous training volumes, so this will be new material. But even if you HAVE covered these concepts before, they are so important it is worth rehashing and reviewing a little. Let’s get started! ************************************* This volume of the “On Target Photo Training” series is about hard light. Using it, shaping it and so on. But, before we can really learn to manipulate and use hard light, we need to understand what it is - as compared to the other types of light. This means that we first need to understand what the other types of light are. Like I mentioned before, each of them has been covered - in depth - in prior “On Target Photo Training” lessons. But, I can’t count on the fact that you have seen them, so I’ll start with a bit of a review. I highly recommend getting the other lessons as well. This review is just to give us a better understanding of hard light - the other lessons cover the other types of light more thoroughly. Here we go…

Ambient Light Ambient Light Defined In a past lesson - we learned about ambient light. The Wikipedia definition of ambient light is: “n. photography and cinematography, available light or ambient light refers to any source of light that is not explicitly supplied by the photographer for the purpose of taking photos. The term usually refers to sources of light that are already available naturally (e.g. the sun, moon, lightning) or artificial light already being used (e.g. to light a room). It generally excludes flashes.”

The use of available light may sometimes pose a challenge for the photographer. The brightness and direction of the light is often not adjustable, except perhaps for indoor lighting sources such as lamps and so on. This limitation will affect the selection of shutter speeds, and may require the use of shades or reflectors to manipulate the light. It can also influence the time, location, and even orientation of the photo shoot to obtain the desired lighting conditions. For example, an outdoor photo taken at noon with the sun as our light source would not look as appealing as one shot later in the day. (Because of the directionality and color of the light.)

Ambient light, because of its low Kelvin temperature, can often produce a color cast in our photos. Avoiding an ugly color cast is one reason why you usually see those grainy shots of blues singers in a smoky dimly lit lounge - photographed in black and white.

First, grainy black and white images add an artistic feel that more clearly fits the subject, but additionally - the various ambient light sources would add an undesirable color cast to the shot that is very difficult to filter out. In this case, art and technique happily coincide! If you find yourself in a low light situation - or one where the color casts are problematic, consider shooting in black and white! BTW - fluorescent lights have a tendency to give a sickly greenish cast to photos! Levels of ambient light are most frequently considered in relation to any additional lighting being used as fill light. In these cases, the ambient light is normally treated as the key (most powerful) light. In some cases, ambient light may be used as a fill, in which case your additional lighting provides the stronger (key) light source. An example would be in bounce flash photography. In bounced flash photos with an ambient fill you are using what would be termed as mixed lighting. A flash with an ambient light fill. The difference in relative intensity of the ambient light and fill light is known as the lighting ratio, an important factor in calculating contrast in the finished image. The important thing to remember about ambient light is that, ambient light is nothing more than the light that is around you, right now. It can be either hard or soft.

To really drive it home, here are a couple light sources that are NOT ambient light…

Light Qualities Previously we learned a bit about various light qualities that have to be considered when you are planning your creative vision. Is it a hard light, soft light, white, yellow and etc. Here is a sample of a hard light. You can tell because of the hard edge and darkness of the shadow.

Here is a sample of soft light. Again, you can tell because of the shadows

We’ve defined and discussed the key/main light (usually but not always the most powerful light in the photo). The key light can be any sort of light, just so it is the main source of light in the photo, and the one we base our exposure settings upon. Here is one where my on-camera flash was the main light, but the rim light (from the sun) was actually more powerful. I did this deliberately so the light from the sun would give the girls a nice golden halo.

Things to consider about the main light; What’s the source, the intensity, directionality and color?

Shadows We’ve learned that shadow defines form. With no shadows, your subject will appear flat and two dimensional. To make our photos more realistic and appear more 3D, we need to give a LOT of attention to the shadows. See how the shadows make this photo of a mannequin look 3D?

Here is a sample of a photo with fewer shadows. See how it looks more 2D (or flatter) than the mannequin photo?

We’ve learned that we need to study shadows. They are more important than most beginners in photography realize. In fact, in portrait photography, all six of the

most popular lighting setups are named for the shadows they create! (Broad light, narrow light, split light, loop light, butterfly light and Rembrandt light.) Before you just start firing away, ask yourself, are there any shadows? What is their directionality? What about the shadow’s depth? If the shadow is too dark, we lose all the facial details. If it is too light, we lose our roundness and 3D effect. We’ve learned that we can manipulate our shadows by adding in a secondary light called a fill light. The fill light is a light that is generally set opposite to the main (or “key”) light and adjusted so that its’ intensity is less than the key light. In this way, it fills in the shadow areas but doesn’t completely eliminate them. Your on-camera flash can be used as a fill light. So can silver, gold or white reflectors, walls or even a van!

This means that a light source doesn’t have to actually GENERATE the light; it can merely reflect light from another source. Are your shadows not dark enough? Use a black reflector! Here’s one using the white of the flooring below her as a fill light.

Raccoon Eyes We learned about raccoon eyes and several ways to fix them…we did several exercises to help sharpen our “creative eye” and learn to predict the effect of

various light and shadows affecting our subject. Here are a couple samples of raccoon eyes...

Visually lose weight We learned how to take a lot of weight off our subjects by controlling the depth of shadows and the color of their clothing.

Glare We’ve learned about the causes of the glare in our subject’s eyeglasses and several easy ways to remove it.

We’ve learned why studio photographers use umbrellas and softboxes - it’s to soften and diffuse the light so we can control the shadows! In this brief review of light we’ve touched on and covered a lot of ground. It wouldn’t hurt you to go back and re-read Volume 5, Volume 6 and check out Volume 8. Re-do the photo exercises. Light and shadow is a pretty important area to master. Volume 5: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007RPMBNK Volume 6: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007RSCOAC Volume 8: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007S4ZJZM Moving on - Let’s get more into hard light and how to shape and control it…

Hard Light Hard Light Defined We define a hard light as one that is small in relation to the subject, generally undiffused and it creates hard edged, dark shadows.

Light Quality Our key light is the light that we are using as our main light source. It is generally the brightest light hitting your subject. Now let’s spend a minute or two discussing the light quality being emitted by our key light. Is it a “hard” light? Or is it a “soft” light? The sun is a hard light. It is unfiltered and undiffused (unless it’s a cloudy day). Plus, it’s relatively intense and small in relation to our subject.

When a hard light hits a subject, intense highlights and sharp black shadows are created. The gradation or fall-off of light from highlight to shadow is sharp and very abrupt.

When you see an actor on stage being lit by a spotlight, it is emulating the sun in that it is a very hard, directional light. When you think of hard light, think of it like a spotlight hitting your subject.

This creates strong modeling of shapes and dramatically emphasizes outlines and forms. It is also useful to create mood. Imagine an athlete after a big game where he or she lost. Now imagine him, or her sitting in the locker room. They are dejected - beaten. In your imaginary image, was the locker room brightly lit? Or was it dark and brooding. You can convey a great deal of emotion with your lighting choices. How about those old film noir movies where they show a “has been - but never really was” boxer. It’s after the fight and they are in the locker room tending to their injuries. The scene almost always shows them alone or with their one and only supporter. Imagine that scene. You can see every drop of sweat, the ragged edges of the cut above the grossly swollen eye. It’s all in stark relief. The room is dark or very dimly lit. It’s all done by using a hard light source and few if any fill lights. They are attempting to show you the fighter’s “bottom of the barrel” type existence. In fact, the whole film noir industry was built on hard light and shadows.

By the way, there are BIG BUCKS available to photographers who can duplicate the black and white, 1930’s and ‘40’s movie star look in portraits! This involves hard lights, hairstyle, make-up and clothing too. Not just the light and shadows.

The above portrait shows a butterfly lighting pattern. Can you see why it is called that? If not, you need my “Building A Portrait” volume: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007SC0LWK Or my “Stunning Portrait Photography - Posing and Lighting” volume: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007SWU27E

Control Viewer Emotions Try to start thinking of light not only as a way of getting a proper exposure onto the film or digital sensor, but as a way of controlling your viewer’s emotions. When you start adding an emotional component to your photographs, you will immediately leap ahead of all the other local photographers.

Texture Hard light is also good for defining texture and irregular surfaces. Think of a bride in her wedding gown. Her dress is covered in lace and bead work. How should you photograph her? Should you use hard or soft light? If you position a hard light so that it is glancing across her body from the side, the shadows created will bring extra emphasis to the lace, stitching and beading.

If you feel the need to lighten the shadows, or lower the dynamic range contrast, you would just add a fill light. This way you still get the beads and lace to pop in your photos, but you also fill in and lighten some of the shadows.

Be careful not to use a fill light that is as strong as the key light. It will introduce competing shadows into your photograph.

What about wrinkles?

If your goal is to show an old weather beaten man with a timeworn, craggy face the best lighting would be a hard light, positioned so that it is glancing across the face. The intense highlights and shadows would emphasize all the wrinkles and planes of the face. Here is an example of the difference between hard light and soft light. Notice how the wrinkles are lighter and the subject appears younger with a soft light source!

Light Angles Matter

Previously we discussed using a glancing side light to accent an item with shadows. Hard light is great for that. What about the face of a young girl wanting to be a model? How would you light her face? A glancing, hard light is going to show every blemish and line in her face. Think she would want that in her portfolio? Probably not! By the way, she doesn’t have to be a model. ANY young girl (or mature woman for that matter) is not going to like a photo that shows all her acne scars, and other bumps and bulges in her face. Boys and men generally care less than women, but they won’t like seeing every mark and blemish either. Many model photographers use a hard light source - an on-camera flash - but they use a “ring flash” to fill in all the wrinkles and shadows from blemishes…

There are several drawbacks to using a ring flash. First, there are problems from red eye. Second, it creates really odd looking round catch lights in the eyes. And third, since it eliminates shadows, you end up with a flat, 2D image.

I recommend against using a ring flash for portrait work. If you need or want a hard light source, use one, but put it at an angle to your subject. Then fill in the shadows as needed. Want to see masterful usage of angles with a hard light source? Pick up any

bodybuilding magazine. They use a hard light source glancing across the body to define and visually enhance the muscles.

Consider the angle of your light. A hard light that is off to the side and glancing across the face (or body) will show every muscle, scar, pit and bulge. But move that same light so that it is shining directly into the model - from the camera viewpoint - and you fill in all those facial anomalies, totally erase all their muscles and give your model smoother skin. Sometimes - a pretty girl for example, shining the light directly into the face is a good thing. (That’s what a ring light is made for.) The trade off is that you flatten the face and body, and lose most of the 3D effect you get from shadows. (BTW - The shadow that defines shape is called “modeling”) Sometimes, like with a body builder - shining the light directly into the subject will ruin the portrait. Every photographic situation has trade-offs. It’s how you deal with them that will define your photographic vision or “eye”. Stepping away from taking photos of people for a second, here’s another example of how the angle of the light can change everything…Suppose you want to shoot a photo of a spider’s web. Shooting spider webs can be done with hard light or soft light, but in my experience hard light makes a more dramatic shot. With the hard light of the sun, it is easy to see the thin filaments of the web as well

as the glistening dewdrops (in the early morning). Assuming of course that the angle is right. If the sun is behind the web - shining towards you - spider webs seem to pop up everywhere! But if you are looking for them with the sun at your back, you could spend all day searching and never find one!

There IS a spider web in the below photo. But, the light is at our back…

Photo Exercise 1 Here’s what you do - go into a field in the early morning, just after the sun clears the horizon. With the sun directly in front of you, get down low to the ground and scout around until you find a nicely shaped spider web.

Beautiful isn’t it? Now, as long as you’re there anyway, take a few shots for your collection. Get down low and fill the frame with the web. Don’t forget to pre-visualize and write everything in your notebook. Once you are done with that - make a mental note of exactly where the spider web is and go around to the other side of it. Now, with the sun at your back, what do you see? Is it as beautiful? Can you see it as well? Can you see it at all? Hopefully, it will have some dewdrops on it. If not, bring a spray bottle of water with you and give it a gentle spritz. By the way, spritzing “dewdrops” onto flowers and spider webs is an old professional trick. It makes them look so much better that few pros would ever go into the field without a spray bottle! Want bigger drops? Add some glycerin to the water.

The dew drops or the spritz of water should help you see the filaments of the web. Or add a bit of pizazz to leaves, flowers and etc.

This is not just an exercise of hard light versus soft light. You are now learning a bit about the angle of light. When you put the finished photos side by side in your notebook, which ones do you like best? Why? This exercise should help you to remember to always turn around and check the scene behind you when you are doing a photo session. By that I mean, the scene in front of you may be beautiful, but the scene behind you could be even better. The angle of the light can make a big difference. Hmmm…I got a little off topic there, talking about light angle rather than talking about the light being hard. Let’s get back to hard light and talk about how to modify it…

Light Shaping One big benefit of using a hard light is that it is easier to control where it is going. Diffused light flies off everywhere and because of it’s ability to wrap around a subject, it can be difficult to fine tune. If you have a hard light that is striking more of the scene than you want, you can easily block it with barn doors, flags, snoots, cookies, and gobos. All of these are basically objects you put in front of or around the light to block or modify it. I call it shaping the light.

Barn Doors If you have a studio type of light and you want to stop the light from hitting any particular areas of your set, you could attach what are called barn doors to the front of it. Barn doors usually come in sets of two or four adjustable flaps that you can open or close to either block the light, or allow light to shine through and onto your subject. This is particularly useful in backlights or hair lights where any stray light would strike the lens and cause lens flare if it weren’t blocked. Here are examples of barn doors…

By adjusting the various flaps (barn doors) the hard light can be directed to or blocked from any area that you want! The photo below shows a hard light being used to light the little girl’s hair. I’ve used barn doors to narrow the light to only hit her hair. If I had not used barn doors (or some other modification method) the light - which was shining directly towards the camera - would have hit the lens and caused flare. It would have ruined the shot.

The Snoot If you are using barn doors and you are still getting too broad a light, and you want to narrow it down even further… Another accessory that is used to shape and modify a studio light is called a snoot. A snoot is simply a cone that is placed over the light source and serves to focus the light down to a smaller light source. This emulates a tiny spotlight and tends to make the light even harder than before. Here is a sample of a snoot mounted on the front of a light…

The function of a snoot is to make the light source smaller, harder and to have it cover a more focused, specific area. If you want your light to only hit a small, specific area - a snoot is just the thing!

You can buy a commercially made snoot to put over your light or you can make your own. All a snoot is, is a cone to narrow down the beam of light. You can make a pretty effective snoot by simply taping a cone of black paper around the outer edge of your light.

Homemade snoots cost next to nothing and will do the job. There are a few drawbacks though, the most important being that since they are paper, they are flammable. Be sure you don’t use a homemade snoot on a hot light and never leave your lights unattended when using homemade modification devices.

Making Your Light Bigger The opposite can occur too! If you want to make your light source larger, but don’t want to diffuse it with a softbox or scrim, you could bounce it off a wall, a reflector or fire it into an umbrella. (Umbrellas come in translucent material for shooting through them and in reflective material for bouncing light out of them.)

See how the light source has gotten larger? I appreciate that most of my readers don’t have studio lights, and may never get them, but it is still important to understand how to modify and shape light. With digital photography it is pretty easy to control the color casts on your final photo, so those work lights you can buy at any home repair type store work very well.

These will all work as beginner’s replacements for studio lights. They will need some post processing to remove color casts, but it’s a low cost way to get started. Caution… these are hot lights! Be careful about any sort of modification devices catching fire. There usually isn’t a problem, but never leave them unattended while they are turned on. In future volumes, I’ll show you how to make an inexpensive softbox lighting setup that you can use in your home (as studio lights) to create some pretty stunning photos. You will soon be able to create photos with your homemade $10 lights, that will rival the best studio portraits. AND you will be able to use them as hard OR soft lights.

Flags, Dots And Fingers Another way to shape light is by using flags, dots or fingers. Flags are like taking one of the flaps in a barn door and just using that to block the light. They come in all shapes, colors and sizes. Generally, larger ones are called flags, if the flag is smaller and narrower in shape - it’s generally called a finger. If it is round, we call it a dot. In reality, they are all different sizes and shapes of the same thing - a way to block light from hitting some part of, or your entire subject. We don’t usually think of permanent, stationary objects as flags, but a tree trunk or

an overhanging leaf covered branch that blocks light from hitting your model would be the same concept. Here are samples of a finger and a dot, a flag is the same thing, just larger…

Now, what if we don’t want to completely block the light, but instead want to cast a specific shadow on our scene? Imagine taking one of the above flags and cutting out a pattern. For example, cut away all but a big tic-tac-toe grid. Now, when the light shines through it, it will cast a shadow that resembles a paned window. Or you could cut out a pattern of leaves and have that pattern striking your backdrop.

Cookies And Gobos In photography we call these patterned flags a “cookie”. They are very useful for adding a little life to a backdrop, or creating a scene. In the theater, they are called “gobos” which stands for GOes Before OpticS the gobo is physically located between the light source and the lights optics (lens). It is actually inserted into the light’s housing. To avoid being burned up and ruined by the intense heat of the lights, theatrical gobos are generally made of metal. In still photography, we don’t place a gobo between the light source and the light’s optics. Instead we place it in front of the light. It is between the light source and the area we want the shadow to fall upon. So, though it does the same basic thing, it technically isn’t a gobo. In photography we call them cookies. The term “cookie” comes from the repetitive “cookie cutter” patterns that most cookies have. The major difference being that since a gobo comes before the light’s optics; it is easier to control the focusing of the shadow images. They are much sharper than what we get with a cookie. Cookies can be made of most any materials ranging from metal to paper and everything in between. We have this flexibility since the cookie isn’t subjected to the heat that a gobo has to endure.

Above is a picture of a cat…it appears to be snoozing with the late afternoon sunlight shining through the window. In reality, it was shot with a hard light source and a cookie cut to resemble the Tee shapes of the window crossbars. Sometimes the use of a cookie is not hidden and is very obvious, other times it’s

hard to tell… Here is one where I was fooling around with shadows and it is pretty obvious that there is a cookie involved…

Below is a picture of a girl looking out a window in the late afternoon light. The window covering’s slats are casting a shadow on her face. Question: Is this a real scene of a girl looking out a window? Or is it a studio shot with a hard light source and a cookie? There’s no way to know, and that’s the whole point. (I suspect the latter.)

Obviously - since they are smaller - it is easier to modify studio lights with flags, dots, and so on… but the sun can be controlled too! Flags (big ones) can be put between the subject and the sun to either block the light or cast a shadow. Natural objects, like a building, trees and so on can be used as well.

Photo Exercise 2 Go back and look at each of the ways we shape and control our hard light source, then try to figure out a way to manipulate the sun and or your on-camera flash using these techniques. Can you make a snoot for your flash? How about a cookie? Find ways to use flags to control the light hitting your scene. Stop by a local camera store and ask them if they will show you a flag, a cookie, a snoot. Just because these modifiers are generally used on studio lights, doesn’t mean that you can’t find a way to get the same look! Try making a snoot out of paper and tape it to your light. Once you’ve completed this training lesson along your photo journey, “Master Photo Lighting - Hard Light”, don’t lose your momentum! Keep reading the next lesson in the series... Master Photo Lighting… Soft Light

Btw - If you haven’t yet gotten a copy of Volume 1 - “7 Secrets To Creating Stunning Photos!”, it’s a freebie! (but, it’s not listed with Amazon), check it out here:

http://www.OnTargetPhotoTraining.com It’s time YOU put the “WOW” factor into your photos! Have fun and I’ll see you again next time. Dan Eitreim http://www.OnTargetPhotoTraining.com On the subject of learning more… The section after the last book in this bundle is a list of other training e-books by “On Target Training” (me), check them out! (TWO of them are FREE!)

Book 3 - Master Photo Lighting - Soft Light By Dan Eitreim

Introduction Last time we learned that two main categories regarding the quality of light are; hard light and soft light. In our last lesson, we studied hard light and hard light shaping: We learned that a hard light is unfiltered and undiffused. It’s also generally small in relation to the subject. For example, the sun at noon in a clear blue sky is a prime example of a hard light. It’s way up there in the sky which makes it pretty small in comparison to us. An undiffused studio light is another example of a hard light. As the light bears down on us, it is rather harsh and creates hard, black shadows.

The transition from light to shadow is abrupt and there is little or no gradation. The planes of the subject are either in bright light or deep shadow, nothing in between.

That’s hard light! As we get into the hows and whys of soft light, we will delve further into hard light so that we can better understand the differences between the two and when to use each. But… Before we get into creating and working with soft light, let’s discuss a few technical lighting problems we frequently run into…

Dynamic Range The dynamic range is basically just the amount of detail we can see at the extremes (highlights and shadows) of the lighting ratio in our photo. A broad dynamic range means we can see details in highlights and shadows that are further apart (a higher lighting ratio) than we can in a narrow dynamic range. The broadest dynamic range would be the difference between black and white. A minimal dynamic range would be the difference in shades of gray. Here (with our dynamic range) we encounter a technical problem. Our eyes have a very broad “dynamic range” and can see details in shadows and in highlights that is MUCH broader than the dynamic range of film and digital sensors. In other words, our eyes can see details in lighting ratios and conditions that film and digital sensors just can’t see.

Narrowing The Lighting Ratio One of the major reasons to use soft, diffused light is to narrow the lighting ratio so we can see the details in both the shadows and highlights. Often, if we shoot a photo with hard light, the lighting ratio between highlight and shadow is just too far apart. There are areas of featureless pure white in the highlights and featureless pure black in the shadows. The areas that our eyes are able to see as a shadow filled with beautiful detail will show as a solid black on film or digital sensor. AND, we often don’t often realize there is a problem until it is too late. Since our eyes can see the detail, we assume the camera can as well. It can’t.

Exposing For The Extremes Losing detail in our photos is obviously not usually a good thing so we try to find ways to fix it. Our first thought is to try adjusting our exposures, but we still run into technical difficulties. If we expose for the shadow areas, this will lighten them up enough to show

shadow details. But at the other end of the dynamic range, the highlights become lighter too. This washes them out and we lose all detail in the highlights.

In the above photo, note how we can see the details in her face, but it was in shadow from the hat. By increasing the exposure to compensate, we lost most of the detail in the brighter areas. (Her clothing.)

In this one, note that by exposing for the dress, the window detail is obliterated! Or at the other extreme, while we can SEE details in highlight areas that are very bright, they unfortunately record as a featureless white on film or with a digital sensor. If we set our exposure for the highlight areas this will tone them down and darken them enough to see detail. But, again we have problems at the other end - the shadows get darker too and go completely black! We lose all shadow detail.

The above photo is an artistic way of shooting the wedding cake, not a mistake with dynamic range. But it does show how exposing for the highlights will make

the rest of the photo go dark. Obviously, exposing for the extremes won’t work, so we think that by exposing for the middle range we will get the best overall exposure. An exposure somewhere in the middle helps a little, but NEITHER the highlights or the shadows will be optimal. By exposing for the middle, we lose detail at both extremes. Keep in mind, there ARE times when losing detail in the shadows or highlights (or both) is exactly what we want! You are the artist, you can shoot your photos any way you want. The issues we are dealing with here are recognizing the times when that is NOT what we want. BTW - the middle, half way between white and black is called 18% gray. This is what your camera exposes for on automatic settings. The following picture is of a commercially available 18% gray card. It will show you the tone your camera strives to achieve with auto settings.

So, what does all this mean? All of this is just a long winded way of saying - your camera just can’t see as much as your eyes! It has a far narrower dynamic range. No current method of photography can compare to the dynamic range of our eyes - except HDR (high dynamic range) photography, which I’ll discuss in a minute.

Dynamic Range Hierarchy

In the hierarchy of types of photography - negative film, positive film and digital sensors - each one has a different dynamic range. From best to worst they are as listed above; negative film, positive film and digital sensors. Negative film has the best dynamic range of the various photo options but keep in mind it has a far narrower dynamic range than our eyes. While the range of the depth of shadow and brightness of highlights that can still show detail on negative film is a lot less than our eyes, it’s a broader range than positive (slide) film or a digital sensor.

Negative Film Next best after negative film is positive film.

Positive Film And lowest in the hierarchy is a digital sensor. The dynamic range of a digital sensor is less than slide film, negative film and our eyes. It has the most narrow dynamic range of all! But, fortunately it is improving every day! Many sensors are now the equal of film.

Why Care About Dynamic Range? Why do we care? How does this somewhat dry information relate to our real world photography? Consider… Your best friends are getting married and you want to get a photo of a bride and groom at noon with your digital camera. It’s a traditional wedding where the bride is wearing white and the groom is wearing black - both ends of the shooting spectrum.

You can SEE details in both the dress and in the tuxedo, but they’re way out of the range that your digital sensor can record. If you expose for the dress, the groom’s tux is going to be nothing but a big, black blob. If you expose for the tuxedo, the bride’s gown is going to totally be blown

out into a solid white lump. What to do? BTW - most wedding photographers opt to put the camera on automatic and hope for the best. That will give you shots that are unsatisfactory on both the exposure AND on the creative side. (Your camera is a machine, it has no creativity at all!) If you MUST shoot a bride and groom in hard, bright noontime light and you absolutely have NO other options… expose for the bride. It’s her day. The groom is really just a prop. Plus, in most cases the tux is a rental but the bride’s dress generally costs hundreds and sometimes even thousands of dollars. (All those beads, lace and sparkly rhinestones add up!)

It would be irresponsible to expose for the rented tux and let the dress get blown out. Again, with weddings, the groom is a prop… focus on the bride.

Sorry guys, but that’s the way it is. There ARE fixes to the problem and we’ll get into them in a minute. Take a few guesses on how you could overcome the dynamic range issues and write them in your notebook. As we progress through the lesson, you’ll learn several ideas. Test them out and see what happens.

Here’s a hint, lower the lighting ratio so that the extremes of shadow and highlights are closer together. For your experiments in dynamic range, you don’t need a bride and groom. Any two white and black objects will do - just be sure there is detail that you can capture. (You are trying to learn to capture detail in the shadows and highlights and if there is no detail to capture, your experiments won’t teach you anything.) A solid black and white card wouldn’t work since there’s no detail. A white and black dog (or one of each) would be great! Fur is great for detail exercises! Plus shooting photos of animals is a TERRIFIC way to learn to master your art. Think kids are tough? Shoot dogs and cats a while. Kids will be a snap!

High Dynamic Range (HDR) Photography While there are several fixes we can employ to get better photos - high dynamic range photography is the only way I know of that can create photos that have a dynamic range that can equal what our eyes can see. While HDR is not about hard or soft light, I am including it here for thoroughness. Basically, the way it is done is to take several exposures and combine them all together for the finished photo. There is special software you can buy that will combine them. The way it works is… Earlier we discussed the problems of exposing for one of the extremes or the other… with HDR we are exposing for BOTH extremes. You would take a wide open shot that is exposing for the shadow area, this will show you details in the shadows. Then you take another shot with slightly less exposure, then another and another until you are stopped all the way down to where you are exposing for the highlights - this gives you detail in the bright areas. You now have a shot that is properly exposed for each of the extremes and several in between! HDR shots usually range from 3 exposures to 11 or more! Then, when all the various exposures are combined, you can see detail in the shadow areas AND in the highlight areas. It is as close as technology can get to replicating what our eyes see. Since there are so many exposures needed and since people have a hard time sitting still, most HDR photography is done on architecture and landscapes.

Shadows Shadows Determine What Type Of Light You Should Use While photography is defined by light (the word actually means writing with light) it’s the shadows that define almost everything! In the area of portrait photography, the various lighting patterns: broad light, narrow light, loop light, butterfly light, Rembrandt light, split light… are ALL named for the shadows they create. The main benefit of (and the main problem with) hard light is the intensity of the shadows. The main benefit of soft light is the type of shadows it creates too! We need to give more attention to shadows to truly understand lighting, what type of lighting to use and how to work with it.

Spotlights Another example of a hard light would be a spotlight on a theatrical stage. Again, it is unfiltered, undiffused and small in comparison to the actor. Again we get bright highlights and deep, hard edged shadows. Note in the photo below, you can see the detail in the highlights (the gloves) but not in the shadow area (see how the tattoo on his right shoulder totally disappears in the shadow?). The photographer must have exposed for the highlights. Clearly, this is the effect they were going after. But…

Shooting a portrait with a hard light directly overhead - as with a spotlight or the sun at noon - creates another technical issue. It will give the model black shadows under the eyebrows. In photography we have a highly technical term for that… we call it “Raccoon Eyes.”

But, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that you should never use a hard light source. There are many times when we WANT heavy shadows. They are terrific for establishing certain moods and feelings in our photos. In a previous lesson I gave the example of a dejected athlete in the locker room after a defeat. If we shot this with bright, high key lighting, the photo just wouldn’t work. We need the shadows to convey the feeling and emotion of the photo. Plus, in the times when we want lighter shadows, there are ways to fill in them in and lower the contrast with reflectors or additional lights. The benefits of starting with soft light are… with soft light, the shadows AND mood are naturally lighter and we don’t have to do any additional work to lighten them. With the contrast already lowered, we can see detail in a broader dynamic range than with hard lights.

But keep in mind that whatever type of light you use, you won’t usually want to totally eliminate shadow! Shadows are what will give your photos some depth and realism. It’s the shadow that takes your photo from a 2D piece of paper to a 3D piece of art. Here is an exception.

When You Don’t Want Shadows! Sure, shadows define shape and depth - and we want shape and depth in our photos so that they are more 3D and realistic, but sometimes shadows can be bad. If you are doing a portrait of a pretty lady, it’s the shadows that will define her wrinkles, acne, and scars. The darker the shadows, the deeper the wrinkles will appear… making her visually appear older. The softer or lighter the shadow, the younger she looks. In this case, you want a soft light that will fill in the shadows. With a soft light, you can visually take ten or more years off a subjects’ appearance.

When You DO Want Shadows But on the other hand, sometimes deep shadows are a good thing! If you want to shoot a portrait of an old man and you are trying to show the hard life he has led (all the hardships, etc.) you would want to emphasize every wrinkle with a deeper shadow.

Or, muscle builders look much more buffed out as the shadows get deeper. Remember, shadow defines form.

The opposite is true as well! If you have an overweight subject, dress them in dark clothing. While shadow defines form and shape, with dark clothing, we can’t see the shadows and our subject looks thinner. That’s why I’m dressed that way in my author portrait. I’m fat!

Deciding On Hard Or Soft Light When pre-visualizing your shots, ask yourself if you should accent, lessen or almost eliminate shadow. Being aware of these concepts will take your photography to the next level pretty fast! It will help you to decide if you want a hard light, or a softer one. I know that some of these ideas can get a little dry… but read and re-read them as often as necessary. They are vital.

It seems as though I’ve been saying that shooting with hard light is a bad thing. That is certainly not the case. You just need to know what the results are going to be and be sure that it is what you want. Now, let’s move away from hard light and talk a bit about soft light. Actually, by understanding the dynamic range concept and how the shadows affect your photos, you already know a lot of why we use soft lights! This “On Target Photo Training” lesson could end right here and you would know more about when and why to use hard or soft light than most of the photographers in your area. But, we’re not ending it here! Now, let’s get a little deeper into what soft light is and how to create it.

Soft Light Soft Light Defined If we defined a hard light as one that is undiffused, small in relation to the subject and creates hard, sharp edged dark shadows… then a soft light must be one where it IS diffused, larger in relation to the subject and has softer edged, lighter shadows. However, not ALL of those factors need to be present. If a light is undiffused, but very large in relationship to the subject, it could be a soft light. If a light IS diffused but tiny, it could still be a hard light. It all depends on the shadows. We’ve been using the sun as our example of a hard light, but it can be a soft light too! Imagine what happens when the sky is cloudy. The sun hits the upper side of the cloud and ricochets off all the interior water particles. The light is diffused and is spread out to cover the entire cloud.

Basically, the cloud has become a huge light modifier. Now our light source is no longer the harsh light of that tiny little sun - but is the softer, diffused light emitted by the huge cloud! When you see a subject lit with this softer light, the shadows are much lighter and the dividing line between highlight and shadow is less defined. And you can see more detail in both shadows and highlights.

Another way that the sunlight can be diffused and made into a soft light is by putting your subject into a shadowed area such as a porch with a roof overhead or in the shadow of a tree and so forth. Open shade not only gives us a softer light, but eliminates the problem with raccoon eyes too!

When you are shooting out of doors with the sun as your main light, look for shadowed areas or shoot when there is a cloud cover to soften the light. If you are shooting indoors with artificial lighting, you will use a diffusion screen of some sort to soften the light. Basically, you are trying to replicate the effects you get from a cloud! The following photos show an undiffused hard light being shped with barn doors, and a light being diffused by shooting through an umbrella. (This is a Wescott umbrella. I heartily recommend their products.) Note how the umbrella not only diffuses the light, but makes the light source much larger in relation to the subject!

There IS a bit of a drawback to diffusing your light. Can you see what it is? The diffusion material absorbs some of the light - so less of it hits your subject.

You will need to compensate by opening up your exposure (the above umbrella loses about 1 stop of light) or use a stronger light. Not a huge problem, but it needs to be considered. Here is an article I wrote on how light diffusers are like clouds… *********************************************************************

The Photography Diffuser - A Portable Cloud The photography diffuser is one of the most useful pieces of equipment a photographer can own! They can smooth out wrinkles, diffuse the light, help us control our shadows and tone down those harsh contrasts! They are indispensable! First...what is a photography diffuser? There are several different types of photo gear that could be considered a diffuser. You could smear some Vaseline over the lens - it’s diffusing the light that goes into the camera and could be called a photography diffuser. Or, you could have a cloud passing by in front of the sun and THAT TOO could be called a diffuser! For the purposes of this article, we’ll think of anything put on the lens as a filter and anything put between the light source and the front of the camera as a diffuser. As I said, a cloud can be a diffuser... Imagine the sun. In relation to our size, it’s just a tiny little thing way up there in the sky. Since it is very bright, yet small, it creates some pretty harsh, black shadows. Now imagine that a white puffy cloud floats in front of the sun...What happens? Now the sunlight is hitting the top side of the cloud and bouncing all over the place! When the - diffused - light comes out through the bottom of the cloud, it has now turned the entire cloud into a huge diffused light source. Since our light is now diffused, it’s softer and less intense. Plus since the light source is much bigger (now the entire cloud is the light source - not just the sun), the light tends to wrap around our subject and soften or sometimes almost entirely eliminate the shadows!

That’s what a diffuser does; it makes the light source bigger and softer. ALL diffusers operate on the same principle. Now imagine a studio strobe lighting system. We don’t generally have clouds floating around in the studio so how can we diffuse our lights? Easy! Just put some translucent material in front of the light. Have you seen photographers shooting their light through umbrellas? That’s a diffuser. Diffusers can be umbrellas, softboxes, screens, scrims and dozens of other names depending on the shape, size and materials they are made of.

But, if you think of a photo diffuser as nothing more than a man made cloud, you should have no trouble understanding how they work and when they should be used. *********************************** If our definition of a hard light is that it is small in relation to the subject, now with the sun behind a cloud, the entire cloud becomes our light source! In relation to us, it is much larger! The light source could now stretch from horizon to horizon. The amount of diffusion could change too! The diffusion from a light wispy cloud would be much less than the diffusion from the ponderous, gray clouds in a snowstorm.

Hard And Soft Light From The Same Source! Note that the same light source can be either a soft light or a hard one - it just depends on size, how far away it is and how it is modified.

Consider our on-camera flash.

It is VERY small in relation to our subject so it tends to be a very hard light. To soften it, there have been many products created to diffuse and soften the light.

The white plastic cover shown above will diffuse the light a bit, but it doesn’t make the light source any larger. It is still going to be a pretty hard light. The diffusion is better than nothing, but not much. You will often hear people recommending that you cover the flash with tracing paper. Again, it’s better than nothing, but not much. So next, we diffuse our light AND make it larger…

In this case, we are using a mini-softbox. While it does make the light larger, it is not enough larger to make a lot of difference. Again, better than nothing but not much. Plus you have the problem of the diffusion absorbing the light - so you need more. To overcome this, you need a brighter flash which will gobble up your batteries in a hurry. In most cases, you will run out of battery power just before the most important shot of the day! So, what to do? ALWAYS try to diffuse your flash and make it bigger by bouncing it off the wall or the ceiling. This will make your light HUGE in relation to your subject. Caution - When bouncing light off the ceiling, be careful about getting raccoon eyes. Watch your angles.

Soft Light Advantage The advantage of using a large, soft light is that it tends to wrap around our subject and fill in the shadows. Now, they are much lighter. You can see this wrap around effect by looking at the shadow’s edge. In a hard light, it is sharp and abrupt. In a soft light, there is a gradual transition.

At the other end of the spectrum, since the light is diffused, it’s less intense and the highlights are a bit less bright. Now that the difference between the shadow and highlight area is much less, the light on our subject will now fall within the dynamic range that our film or digital sensors can see. We still get the 3d effect of shadows, but they are light enough so that we can still see the detail. At the other end, the specular highlights will show detail too! Of course this depends on the size of the light source and amount of diffusion. How much the difference is - between highlight and shadow - is called the lighting ratio.

As previously mentioned, in photography studios we see photographers shooting through translucent umbrellas, soft boxes or large screens. In effect, they are trying to duplicate the sort of soft light we get from a cloud. The screen or umbrella in front of a studio light is the same as a cloud in front of the sun or an area of open shade.

The Umbrella Here is a sample of light being shone through the umbrella. The first image is from the viewpoint of the light; the second is what the subject would see. Notice how the light source becomes much larger - in addition to being diffused.

The Softbox Another very popular type of diffusion is the soft box. This is similar to the umbrella, but is enclosed. Soft boxes generally come in rectangular, oval or octagonal shapes.

In the above photos of a soft boxes, notice how the sides are enclosed. This is done for a couple of reasons. First, it makes the light more controllable by having it all going forward. None is allowed to escape from the back or sides and potentially put light into a scene where it isn’t wanted. Another reason for enclosing the light is - the inside portion of the black opaque nylon is usually highly reflective and can serve to actually intensify the light as well as making sure that it is evenly distributed across the whole translucent diffusion screen in the front. A soft box tends to be a better lighting solution than an umbrella since the light is evenly spread across the diffusion material. This means the light is larger and there are no “hot” spots. Look back at the photo of the umbrella. The light IS larger, but it doesn’t cover the entire area of the umbrella and the center portion is much

brighter or “hotter” than the edges. On the other hand, soft boxes take more effort to put together than an umbrella and if you don’t have much time, or are shooting on location, umbrellas are easier to work with. Umbrellas and softboxes come in many sizes. I’ve got a soft box that measures around 9 inches square that attaches to and diffuses my on-camera flash. I’ve also got a couple softboxes that are 4 feet wide and 6 feet tall! And that’s nothing! There are also softboxes that can cover an entire studio ceiling. Check out the reflections in the studio pictures of cars. You’ll see reflections of a gigantic soft box.

Make Your Own Softbox Remember how I told you that I would show you how to get studio quality photographs without having to buy a bunch of expensive equipment? Here is your first project. Let’s make a soft box. Get a cardboard box. Size isn’t vital, bigger is better, but not too big. We want this to be an easy project. Choose a box with a bit of depth, a flat box won’t work. Refer to the pictures of the commercially made soft boxes in the last section for the concept. Instead of the black nylon, imagine a box. For this first project, we aren’t going to worry about the taper you see in the commercial softbox photos. Just picture a square box.

Now that you have a box, cut off one side of it. This will be where the light comes out and shines toward your subject. (This is the white nylon area in the photo.) After you have cut off the front, line the interior of the box with tinfoil. Make it so the shiny side is showing. It works best if you crumple the tinfoil first. That way, you’ll have light bouncing all over the inside of your soft box.

I’ve never tried it, but if you want to invest a couple bucks, you can buy silver metallic paint that dries with a mirror like finish. This sort of paint, when dry, could possibly replace the tin foil. Then cut a hole in center of the back of the box - opposite the missing side. Make the hole just big enough for your light. You can use a studio strobe or even a regular flash. If you have a detachable flash on your camera (and the cords to trigger it) you can make the hole just big enough for that. Or, you can buy a cheap studio flash on Ebay - or, just use a tungsten household light. Hardware or DIY builder type stores sell clamp on work lights for around ten bucks. They work great! One of those hand held lights that auto mechanics use could be a good choice too!

Be aware that continuous light sources DO build up heat! Properly handled there should never be a problem, but to avoid any sort of fire hazard, NEVER leave your set unattended. And turn the light off when you aren’t actually using it. I shouldn’t have to say this, but if you see any amount of smoke coming from your light… turn it off! Next, take one of those translucent white garbage bags and tape it to the front of the box. Voila! You have a soft box! It will be relatively small so it is best used for headshots or still life sets. Try it out! In the above sample, they’ve also attached a wooden support to make it easier to mount the box to a tripod. If you use a light stand, this isn’t needed. Note that the light they are using is a regular “on-camera” flash. Any sort of light will work!

Test Your New Softbox! Create a small still life out of some fruit or something and take some shots both with and without your new soft box. Don’t forget to pre-visualize the end result and write everything in your notebook. Compare the two shots, one with and one without the soft box. How are they different? Which do you like better? At this point, we aren’t overly concerned with the color temperature of the light. If you are using a flash, the color temp will not be an issue. If you are using tungsten

lights, the resulting photo will need to be filtered. What we’re studying now are the highlights, the shadows and the transitions between them. Color temp can be adjusted with filters or your white balance settings - but for now, don’t worry about it. Take photos with and without your soft box at varying distances from your subject. What changes? (As your light moves further back, it becomes softer. You will also have less light hitting the subject. Don’t forget to adjust your exposure settings.) Pay particular attention to the shadows. How are they different? Notice the depth and color- are they deep black, or some shade of gray? Then check out the transition area between the light and shadow. See how it is abrupt - going immediately from light to dark when you don’t use a soft box? See how there is more of a gradual transition with the soft box? Experiment and play around with your soft box, then when you are feeling a little more ambitious, you can make a bigger one out of 4 foot sheets of foam core or light plywood. With this more ambitious version, cut the foam core material so there is a taper. This is a more efficient use of the light and focuses more of the light onto the diffusion material.

Other Soft Light Options Keep in mind… light can be softened even without using an umbrella or soft box. The light in the shade of a tree, porch or large building (we call this open shade) is softer than the direct sunlight.

Remember our wedding couple at noon? Put them in some open shade. Since the light is no longer direct, there’s less difference between the highlights and shadows and you get a nice transition plus you’ll be able to see more detail. Light reflected off a huge building or even a white truck or van is much larger than the light of the sun and wraps around our subjects. Interior walls work well too. Here is one where the hard light from the window is being softened and filled in by reflecting off the interior walls. (There is a color cast that should be handled, but that’s another issue.)

If all you want is to soften the light of your on-camera flash, a quick solution is to tape a piece of tracing paper over the flash. I mentioned earlier that it wasn’t very effective - since the light is so small, but you can help solve that by diffusing it more. The amount of diffusion can be controlled by the number of layers of tracing paper. Like I said, it won’t help a whole lot, but it WILL add a little diffusion to your flash. Or, you could bounce it off a nearby wall or the ceiling. Or both. Remember, if all you have is a hard light source, you can use additional lights or reflectors to fill in the shadows and lower the lighting ratio that way. In your experiments with your soft box, you probably noticed that if the light is too large or too close to the subject, there won’t be enough shadow to define the shapes - and the highlights will be too bright and spread out. If the light is too small or too far away from the subject, it can’t wrap around - so it becomes a hard light source even though it is modified. Like Goldilocks, you are looking for the distance that is just right for your particular sort of diffusion. It varies. Flags, fingers and dots can still be used to block or steer soft light just like they are used on hard light, but because the light is diffused, it wraps around the modifiers and they are less effective.

The photo below shows a softbox with the light being modified by a white nylon front and then shaped with a “honeycomb grid.

I think we’ve discussed hard light, soft light and modifiers enough for now. I’m sure you can see the difference between hard light and soft. Plus, you now understand the various modifiers, when, how and why you use them. Go forth and experiment! Here is a bonus preview of another of the “On Target Photo Training” lessons… “Photo Composition Mastery!” http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007S63PS8 Photo composition is a big factor in whether you will want to use hard or soft light. I don’t want to cover TOO much about composition here (after all there is an entire volume on the subject) but let’s take a look at a few of the basics of composition.

Composition Composition Defined Composition has been defined as: the relationship between objects in the frame. Sounds simple, but can take a lifetime of study and even then, it can never be truly mastered. If you want to move away from grab shots and into true photo mastery composing even the most simple of shots can be a complex matter. We should consider light, shadow, perspective, angle, texture, line, shape, balance, rhythm and unity. But wait, we aren’t done yet! Don’t forget color, symmetry, depth, distortion, arrangement of subjects, furniture, props and so on. Next we are likely going to be considering the cultural, psychological, emotional and even sexual overtones. From now on, every time you see a photograph that particularly grabs you. Pull out this list of compositional elements and see how each of them comes into play. Or not. Choosing to leave something out can be every bit as important as putting it in. That’s where you put your own personal stamp on an image.

Framing First in our study of composition, let’s discuss framing. Framing is to composition what lighting is to exposure. In this case, we are talking about how your subject is handled overall (framed). As in, “we framed an answer to the question.” At this point, we are not talking about a physical frame around them. The first step in framing is to walk around your subject to find the best place from which to shoot. You will want to pick a backdrop that is uncluttered and not likely to jar the attention away from your subject. You’ll want to find one that is the most dramatic, or tells the most complete story. Possibly a small change in the direction of the lighting will tell a completely different, more dramatic tale.

How about considering contrast? Will the subject blend into the background? Will they stand out? How can we direct the eye of the viewer into the photograph and onto our subject? Can we include foreground elements? Tree branches, doorways, and arches to (physically) frame our subject? How about adding elements pointing and directing the eye to the subject - leading lines? Both of the following shots are insects. One is a butterfly and the other shows a spider having lunch. Which one do you think is “framed” the best?

Can you see how the butterfly is totally lost in the background? While the spider “pops?” A slight shift so that the butterfly is isolated against the sky and leaves wouldn’t have been ideal, but it WOULD have been much better. BTW – The butterfly is centered in the “bulls eye” position (which is the most boring placement possible for this type of shot). In the next photo, the spider is placed on one of the “power” points in the rule of thirds. See an improvement? The veins in the leaf and the angle of the plant’s branches off to the side also form “leading lines” and force the eye to the spider – the main subject. All in all, a much better photo! (The flower buds on the left side tend to draw the eye off the spider and if they would have been eliminated - it would be a stronger shot.)

Vignette

Vignetting is another way to suggest depth. Note how the above photo has a dark vignette around the outer perimeter. Since the shot gets lighter and lighter towards the center; it draws the eye in. It makes you wonder where the road is going!

A vignette can be added to the photo, like the above shot, or it can be any sort of natural vignette that will draw the eye to the main subject.

If you are adding a foreground element to suggest depth, it’s usually better to make the object dark and out of focus. Darker objects have less of a tendency to distract our attention from the subject.

Shape What will be the shape of the photo? Will it be horizontal? Vertical? Does the shape of the photo add to or detract from the subject matter?

Note how the stairs are accented by the vertical shape of the shot! While this goldfish would have looked out of place in a vertical shot.

This may seem very basic, but you’d be surprised how often I see photos that use the wrong shape - and suffer for it. Even when you are doing a quickie snapshot, there is no reason to completely throw out good photo technique.

Size What about the size of our subject? If it’s a person…are we doing a head shot? A full body shot? Or something else that falls in between the two extremes. Or, possibly just a small portion of the total!

If it’s a nature shot, how much is going to be included? Will you accent (or even include) the entire mountain range - or perhaps just a single flower. The panoply of fall color - or just a single leaf?

Space Consider the space around the subject. Will there be any? If it is a head shot, will

you have a lot of room around the head? Or will it be cut off – to focus on the eyes, hands or some other aspect.

If the subject is looking or moving off to the side, viewers will be more comfortable if there is more space on that side. Do you want the viewers to be comfortable? Or are you going for something artsy that puts the viewer off balance.

Mood Some aspects of composition affect our moods. Cool colors like blues and greens are more restful and less jarring than the hot reds and oranges.

Diagonals Diagonals add dynamism to a photo. They suggest an imminent change or collapse - like a falling tree. Or a drop of water about to fall. They can also lead the eye into (or out of) a photo!

Symmetry Symmetry is so often found in nature that it tends to be calming and reassuring. If a photo is asymmetric, it can have a jarring affect. Or at least it will attract more attention. Most still life photos are more effective and interesting if the number of objects in the photo is an odd number. It’s asymmetric and subconsciously draws our attention.

Asymmetric

Symmetric

Clutter Cluttered compositions exhaust the eye as well as pulling the attention away from the subject. Remember the photo of the butterfly?

Since directing the viewers’ attention to our subject is an important element in a successful photograph - a vital aspect of composition involves eliminating or minimizing distracting elements.

Photo Exercise Look through a book of well done photographs. You could possibly go down to your local bookstore and look through a few of the “coffee table” books. Look at each picture and try to determine what makes it special. It must be special to someone, or it wouldn’t have been published in the book. Look at the lighting - what type is it? Natural sunlight, studio lights… If it is sunlight, what time of day do you think the photo was taken? What would you guess is the color temperature of the light? Is it hard light or soft light? If it is a soft light source, try to figure out what sort of diffusion they used. If it is a hard light source, why did they pick that? Would it be improved if the light was softer? Or not. Why did the photographer pick that time of day? Why did they pick that particular subject, angle, etc. Is the photo a horizontal or vertical composition? Why? Would you have done it that way? What would change in the photo if the other shape had been used? Does it elicit some feeling from you? Why? Is it the color palette or something else? Enjoy your trip(s) to the bookstore. The more photos you analyze, the better your photo “eye” will become and the faster you will start seeing amazing shots all around you. Once you’ve completed this training lesson along your photo journey, “Master Photo Lighting - Soft Light”, don’t lose your momentum! Keep reading the next lesson in the series bundle... “Photo Mastery - Shadows, Form And Texture”

Btw - If you haven’t yet gotten a copy of Volume 1 - “7 Secrets To Creating Stunning Photos!”, it’s a freebie! (but, it’s not listed with Amazon), check it out here:

http://www.OnTargetPhotoTraining.com It’s time YOU put the “WOW” factor into your photos! Now, grab your camera and get out there! Don’t just read through these books! Get out there and experiment! Dan Eitreim [email protected] On the subject of learning more… The section just after the last book in the series is a list of other training e-books by “On Target Training” (me), check them out! (TWO of them are FREE!)

Book 4 - Photo Mastery - Shadows, Form And Texture By Dan Eitreim

Introduction In the beginning sections of this e-book, we will be reviewing and discussing areas that we have covered before. Many of you haven’t seen the previous training volumes, so this will be new material. But even if you HAVE covered these concepts before, they are so important it is worth rehashing and reviewing a little. Let’s get started!

Light Makes Shadow It is important that we understand light (and the absence of it) to understand form and texture. Actually, it is the SHADOWS that will define our shapes, make our textures “POP!” and make our photography more 3D. So, while a lot of this “On Target Photo Training” volume may seem to be about light, the better you understand these lighting concepts, the better you will understand the shadows created by them… and how to use them to define your shapes and textures.

Without doubt, light - and by extension, the lack of it - is the most important subject in photography. Second (a very close second) in importance would be shadow. Actually, light and the shadows it creates is what photography is all about. In a previous “On Target Photo Training” volume we learned that, according to Wikipedia, the word “photograph” was coined in 1839 by Sir John Herschel and is based on the Greek words: (phos) “light” and (graphê) “representation by means

of lines” or “drawing”. Together they mean “drawing with light”.

Sir John Herschel But, while the word photography may mean drawing with light, our photos would be very bland and 2 dimensional without shadows. In the above photo of Sir John Herschel, note how the shadows help to make his face more rounded and 3D. More realistic looking. It’s also the shadows that give texture to his hair. And shadows give us a feel for his age by showing us his wrinkles - and their depth. Imagine a photo with few (or no) shadows. It would be much more flat and 2 dimensional.

There are quite a few types of light sources - such as incandescent, flash and the

sun and all of them can be used to illuminate our subject and show form and texture in photography. Their main differences are in light quantity and color.

Color Temperature - Kelvin Scale Light can be many different colors. And by that, I don’t mean the various colors that you see in advertising signs and so forth. I mean the color that shows on our photographs, even though we viewed the scene as typical white light. The light’s color is determined by the color temperature of the light source and is measured with the Kelvin scale. BTW - the color temperature of a light source can change too! The color temperature of the light from the sun at dawn or dusk is dramatically different than the color temperature at noon. Here is how the Kelvin scale works… Basically, the Kelvin temperature scale is based on the concept of starting with a solid black object that emits no light. Next, we start a fire underneath it. As it gets hotter and starts to glow, it emits radiant light. As the fictional black object gets hotter and hotter, the color of the emitted light changes.

We can measure the different temperatures that will make the glow go from a dull red all the way through white hot and into blue. Film and digital sensors are created to record properly with the white light you would get from the sun at noon - which measures at about 5600 degrees on the Kelvin scale. Most household (tungsten) lights glow at about 3200 degrees Kelvin. In photographs this creates a yellowish/orange cast that needs to be adjusted so we can see the scene in our photos like we do with our eyes! Our brains have learned to filter out the yellowish color cast when we are looking around the room, so we don’t notice it like a camera does.. Here is what the Kelvin color scale would look like graphically...

Here is a more easily understood graph...

The color cast created by different light temperatures can be adjusted by using special film (if you are a film shooter) that is designed to work at the lower or higher temperature - or by using colored filters over the camera’s lens or even a filter over the lights themselves. With digital photography, adjusting the white balance and editing with Photoshop are also ways to fix the color casts in a photo. It’s these color casts that are the reason why we even NEED a white balance adjustment. Or, we could simply bring in additional light that is at the proper (white) color

temperature and use it to overwhelm the others. This is one of the reasons why we use an on-camera flash when we are shooting indoors. Both on-camera flashes and studio strobes are calibrated to be the Kelvin equivalent of the sun at noon. The flash or studio strobe will overwhelm the yellowish cast caused by the incandescent light (around 3200 degrees Kelvin) and give our film or digital sensor the white light it needs. (Around 5600 degrees Kelvin.)

Light Meters As previously mentioned, the two big factors we need to be concerned with when considering light are the color and the quantity. The Kelvin scale measures the color and our light meter measures the quantity of light in the scene.

The two basic types of light meter are ones that measure reflected light and meters that measure incident light. By the way, there ARE meters that measure the Kelvin temperature, but most of us will never shoot work that is exacting enough to need one of them.

Reflected Light Meter All of the - in camera - meters measure light reflectance. What does that mean? When we look at an object, what our eyes see (or what our camera lens sees) is the light being reflected off of that object. The light leaves the light source, hits the subject and bounces (reflects off the subject) into the lens. The meter in our camera measures this reflectance and tells us how much light is getting to the camera. Pretty simple concept. The whole point of measuring the light is that we need to set our exposure to be certain we have the right amount of light to properly expose the film or that we have the right amount of light hitting the digital sensor. Not enough light and we are underexposed. Too much light and we are overexposed. Most scenes have both light areas AND dark areas. What do we set our exposure to record? The bright areas in the scene - the highlights? Or should we expose for the dark areas of the photo - the shadows? The camera’s meter CAN measure either one of them. Actually, the older film

shooters among you will remember that negative film did a better job if we exposed for the shadows and positive (slide) film did better if exposed for the highlights. At this point in time, digital sensors don’t actually do as well as film at either end. But we start to run into exposure problems… If we expose for the highlights, that means we won’t be getting enough light to show details in the shadows and darker areas. They will just turn into a solid black lump. If we go to the other end of the spectrum and expose for the shadow areas, then there will be too much light in the highlights and they will get blown out and appear as a featureless white! What to do? The manufacturers of light meters scratched their heads and pondered a while and here is what they came up with… The theory is that in most of the scenes we are likely to be shooting, there will be a mix of both light and dark areas. And to get the best overall exposure, we should aim for the middle. The photo’s exposure is determined by taking all the light in a scene, finding an average value and exposing for that. The meters’ reading will give us a value that is half way between white and black. In the printing world, this “half-way” value is called 18% gray.

In other words - the meter manufacturers assume that the average scene will have

highlights, shadows and a wide range of colors and reflected luminance values. So, they use an average and set that average to record at a point half way between white and black – 18% gray.

Problems With Reflected Light In most cases using an 18% gray average is okay, but the meter can be fooled when the reflected light is NOT average. What if it is brighter or darker overall than an average scene? This is a big problem with reflectance meters. All of them. If you were to shoot a scene that was absolutely pure white, the meter would measure the amount of light in the scene, average it out and set the exposure for that average to 18% gray. Below is a snow scene. The first photo is what your eye sees, the second is what the camera sees.

Have you ever wondered why your winter snow pictures always turn out a dingy gray? The same situation exists at the other end of the spectrum. If you were to shoot a scene that was absolutely pure black, the meter would measure the amount of light in the scene and set the average exposure to 18% gray.

Here is something that most people have a hard time grasping. BOTH the pure white AND the pure black shots turn out an identical 18% gray! If you were to shoot a photo of a pure white piece of paper, then using the same lighting and so on, shoot a photo of a pure black piece of paper - BOTH of them would look identical in the finished photo. We saw what happens with snow - here is another scene we commonly run across… If you were to shoot a sunset, the intense amount of bright light from the sun hitting the meter would fool it into thinking the scene is brighter than it really is. Then when the meter sets the exposure to show the light from the sun as18% gray…you end up with a horribly dark, underexposed shot.

The vast majority of amateurs never understand why their sunset photos aren’t as stunning as they remember the actual sunset as being. They blame the camera when in fact it was a misuse of the meter. One fix (the most common) for this dark sky problem is to meter the sky without the sun being in the frame. Then recompose the shot to include the sun. This way you are more accurately recording the amount of light in the overall scene.

Be very careful when you set your camera on automatic. The camera is a machine and has no creativity! YOU need to be the boss and make adjustments to the meter readings so that your photos reflect your creative vision. If there is a lot of bright light in the scene, lower your exposure a stop or two. If there are a lot of dark

areas, increase it your exposure by a stop or two.

Incident Light Meter Another fix to the light averaging problem is to use an “incident” light meter. This is a hand held meter and is separate from the camera. The reflectance light meter is built into the camera. The incident light meter measures the amount of light falling onto a subject - not the light reflected from it. The light leaves the light source and hits the meter and the subject at the same time. There is no light reflection involved in the meter reading.

In this way, overly bright and overly dark subjects don’t affect the meter reading. Incident light meters are measuring the amount of light HITTING the subject, not the amount of light bouncing off of the subject. While the amount of light is still averaged and set to 18% gray, areas of the scene that are lighter or darker don’t affect the average. In the final print, they are recorded as we see them - lighter or darker. This type of metering will give us better results. Since it is the actual light is being measured - not its reflection. With an incident light measurement, a photo of a pure white piece of paper and a pure black piece of paper will show them as they appear to us, pure white or pure

black. Not as an 18% gray. BTW - Many incident meters have the ability to also be used as reflected light meters. Whew…we’ve covered a lot of ground! And admittedly, most of it was dry technical stuff but understanding how light (and the measurement of it) works is vital to understanding shadows and how shadows work. Remember it is the shadows that will define our form and texture. Shadows are what make our photos look 3D and “POP”. Since most of us don’t have a set of studio strobes, let’s start out talking about the type of light we will be using more than any other… ambient light.

Ambient Light Ambient light is nothing more than the light that is around you right now. It could be the sun, the moon, regular household lights, exploding fireworks, lightning streaking across the sky and so on. The term ambient light is generally assumed to exclude any sort of on-camera or studio flash, or any additional lighting brought in to aid in the photograph. It is the light that is naturally occurring and would be there even if you weren’t shooting a photo. Here are several samples of ambient light.

The last image shows a photo done using ambient light from several different sources! (I think they could have done a better job by using a solid tripod – don’t you?) Here are a couple samples of light that are NOT considered to be ambient light. I’m trying to really drive this point home... we are building on our lighting education pretty quickly and it’s important to have a thorough understanding of what is what!

Ambient Light Qualities As we’ve previously learned, ambient light - depending on the source - can be many different colors. Additionally it can have widely varying levels of intensity. So, when we are preparing to shoot a photo, we not only have to consider the AMOUNT of light (for a proper exposure) but the quality - for creative considerations. Quality could mean the color of the light, or many other factors such as… Is the light hard? Is it soft? Is it diffused or reflected? What is the surface of the object being photographed? Is the surface round, flat, curvy? Does it have a matte finish that will suck up light or is it a metallic finish that will blast your light right back at you? Do we WANT the texture of shadows? Or should we minimize them? These are all light qualities that you will soon start noticing and learning to manipulate. But whatever type of light you are using, remember, it is the shadows that will define your form and texture. No shadows will almost always give you an inferior photo. It seems strange but in photography - which is the study of light - it is the shadows that make a photograph artistic and something that people will want. Since we so desperately need shadows, we need to know what type of light produces what type of shadow. This will help us decide what light sources we will want to use to capture our creative vision. Neither hard nor soft light is right or wrong, just different.

Shadows From Hard Ambient Light Here are a couple samples of “Hard Light”…

Hard light is generally undiffused and small in relation to the subject. Observe how dark the shadows are - and how sharp the shadows’ edges are! Outdoors the sun is a good source of hard ambient light. Note how small it is in relation to the subject…

BTW - One major sample of hard light is our on-camera flash. It is extremely small compared to our subject and produces harsh unforgiving shadows. It is almost always a good policy to bounce the light off the wall or ceiling before it hits the subject.

Soft Ambient Light Shadows Here are a couple samples of “Soft Light”. Soft light is generally diffused in some way and large in relation to the subject. Because of the size and diffusion, soft light tends to wrap around the subject and fill in the shadows. Note that, although we still have some shadow, the shadow is lighter in intensity and has softer – virtually indistinguishable edges.

A light source CAN be both! The sun can be considered as a soft light if it is diffused (which makes it larger). The most common way of diffusing the sun is with a cloud, but it can be done with commercially made screens or even something as simple as a white sheet! The open shade of a porch, or tree branches overhead do a good job of diffusing the sun too!

Note how the shadows around this girls’ cheeks define them and make them round and chubby looking (cute and desirable in kids, not so much in adults)! Imagine this photo with no shadows!

The Main/Key Light The main light in a photograph is called the “key” light. In most photography discussions, when you hear someone refer to a main or key light, they’re usually talking about studio lights. But, that’s not strictly correct. As long as it is your main light, it can come from any source not just studio lighting. The following photo is one I did as an experiment. The main light (actually the ONLY light) in this photo is from a handheld flashlight! I had the girl lying on a table covered with dark material and the room was totally dark. I then set the shutter to remain open while I ran the light from a flashlight up and down her body.

Observe how the shadows define the shapes of her face and legs. See how the shadows are what define the texture of the feather boa? The areas of the boa without shadow go flat and textureless. Another consideration for the “main light” is that it has to be the main light that you are using for lighting your subject. It is generally the brightest light in the photo, but not necessarily. In the following example, the “key/main light” is my on-camera flash. The sunlight in their hair is actually brighter than the light from the flash! Even though it is brighter than the key light, it isn’t the main source of light illuminating our subjects. In this case it is

acting as a “rim light.”

When designing your creative vision for a photograph, the first lighting consideration will be the key light. Everything else builds off of this light.

Planning The Shadow Amateurs tend to always place the key light so it shines directly into the face of the subject. The old rule of thumb was always to have the light coming from over your shoulder. This is not the only place it can be and, in fact, straight into the face is generally NOT the best possible placement. So before we can start planning our shadows - we first need to determine the directionality of our key light. Where is it coming from? Is it straight overhead? Is it coming from behind the photographer? Is it behind the subject or off to the side? More importantly, is it where we want it to be? If not, can we adjust the position of the light? Our position? The position of the subject? Most of us - particularly in the beginning - think that if our key light is coming from the sun, we are stuck with it and can’t do much in the way of adjusting. This is a VERY long way from the truth! When shooting with the sun as your key light, most amateurs go with the previously mentioned old standby of having the light come from over the photographers shoulder and into the face of the subject. This is usually a mistake.

Squinting In that scenario, the subject is looking right into the sun and will undoubtedly be squinting. Plus, with the light coming at them from straight ahead, you have virtually eliminated shadows (and the 3D form they give your subject) from your portrait.

Light coming from the side not only gives you better “modeling” (form defined by shadows) but eliminates squinting as well.

Raccoon Eyes Sometimes - certain types of shadows are something to be avoided! Another common shooting mistake is to have the sun directly overhead. This causes what we call “Raccoon Eyes!” See the dark shadows around the eyes? Looks like a Raccoon’s mask.

When just learning photography and the basic creative options, most beginners work at getting rid of the shadows in a portrait. This is (almost always) a horrible mistake. Shadows are important for form and texture, but there ARE times when shadows are not a good thing… In a few instances, like the raccoon eyes example, shadows can ruin a photo. Sometimes there are other shadows in the shot that can be distracting. Here is an article I wrote a while back addressing this issue:

Do You HATE Those Pesky Shadows? I get questions all the time from my photography students about unwanted background shadows and how to get rid of them.

The bad news is; background shadows are a constant problem for photographers. The good news is there are a number of simple “fixes”. First, what causes the shadow? Well, obviously it is caused by the light hitting

your subject and not hitting the background behind them. So, if you’ve got a problem with unwanted shadows falling on the background, one way to remove the shadow is to remove the background. Obviously, if there is nothing for the shadow to fall on, voilla! No shadow. So, fix number one would be - eliminate the background. If you are shooting outdoors, position your subject so that there is nothing behind them! Easy enough. If you are indoors, obviously you can’t take down the walls, but you can move the subject further away from them! Shoot them closer to the middle of the room instead of right up against the wall and your shadow problems will disappear. Another option is to move them so that the background is a corner of the room. This can often hide the shadow problem. Another fix is; have a light hitting the background. If you are using a “studio” lighting setup, once you get your subject lit the way you want them, add an additional light that strikes only the background and not the subject. The additional bonus to this is that with the use of colored gels, cookies, and scrims - you can make this background light throw different colors, shapes and patterns onto the background. That way, you can make it into a design element not just a shadow removal system. Think of light the same way you would think of a ball on a billiards table.

Light will hit the subject at a certain angle and reflect off at that same angle - like

the billiards ball striking the cushion and bouncing off. The shadow doesn’t bounce. It is ALWAYS directly in line with the light. So, you can minimize the shadow problem by changing the angle of the lights so that the shadow falls into an area that won’t show in the final photo. You can do this outdoors by moving the subject until the light is hitting them from the direction you want. Indoors, or with a studio setup, you can move around the lights to get the best angle. When shooting with only an on camera flash, you can bounce the light off the ceiling or a wall to change the angle the light is approaching the subject. The harshness and intensity of a shadow is caused by the relative strength and size of the light. If you lower the intensity of the light, that will also lower the intensity of the associated shadow. It will still be there, but you may be able to minimize its’ distracting effect. You can lower the intensity of the light by using less power, or by using the same amount of power - but moving the light further back (or the subject further away). You can change the size of the light - and make it bigger - with umbrellas, softboxes and scrims. Or the sheer curtains on a window. Think of an umbrella or softbox like a cloud moving between the sun and a subject. A cloud diffuses the light making the entire cloud a light source rather than just the tiny little sun. Go outside and observe some shadows before and after being blocked by clouds. You will see a dramatic difference in the shadows. There are entire books written about this subject and this is by no means an exhaustive solution, but it should give you something to consider.

Shadows Define Form Vital - write this in your notebook! Shadow defines form. With no shadows, your subject will appear flat and two dimensional. We want our photographs to be as three dimensional and realistic as possible, so not only do we need to pay attention to the source, the amount and the quality of the light… we need to pay attention to the amount and quality of the shadows! If you move your key light - or your subject - so that the light is more to the side and slightly above, you will introduce shadow into the portrait. More importantly, because of the shadow, you will introduce shape and dimension. Your photo will acquire a three dimensional feel and will “pop”. In the below photo, while the subject actually isn’t alive - due to the shadowing she appears so three dimensional, it looks like she could turn her head and start talking to us at any second.

But, there can be too much of a good thing! True - we want shadow so that our subject appears rounder and more 3d, but what if our key light is too intense and the shadow is almost completely black? In some

cases, this might be exactly what our creative vision calls for, but sometimes it isn’t. If the shadow side of the face is too dark, we could lose all the facial details so what can we do to fix that?

Enter the second light in our photo study, the fill light. (Ideally, most portraits will call for at least three lights. The main light, the fill light and a separation light.))

The Fill Light This second light is used to fill in and lighten the shadows so that instead of a black featureless blob, we can get back the details on that side of the face. Studying the below photo, it appears that the main light was shining through the window so the fill light was on the side of her face opposite the window. Notice how much lighter the shadowed side of her face is as compared to the previous photo.

BTW - I’m discussing a person’s portrait, but the same concepts apply to any subject. Dogs, cats, vases of flowers, apples… it doesn’t matter. This second light is called - appropriately - a fill light. The fill light is usually positioned either directly opposite the key light - or at the same angle as and behind the camera. It is set at a lower intensity than the key light. The lower intensity is so that the shadow will still be there, but will be slightly filled in, making it lighter. By using a fill light, we can see more of the facial details in the shadow areas. The difference between the highlights and shadows is called the lighting ratio. The smaller the ratio - i.e. 2:1 - the lighter the shadows. The greater the ratio, 8:1 the darker. In those rare cases where we DON’T want any shadows, we can set the fill light to have the same intensity as the key light. 1:1

The depth of the shadow – from non existent to totally black will vary depending on your creative vision for the portrait. And YOU control the intensity of the shadow as much as you do the intensity of the light. You may be thinking, OK this is all fine if I’m shooting in a studio where I can control everything, but I’m not a pro shooter - it won’t work for me. Not true, you can get studio looking portraits – outside – pretty easily once you understand everything you’re learning here! If we are doing an outdoor portrait and using the sun as our key light, we’re stuck right? I mean there is no way to add in another sun as a fill light, right? Wrong. Did you know that your on camera flash can be used as a fill light? Just set it so the flash intensity is less than the intensity of the light from the sun. In that case, you would have light hitting the subject’s face on the side from the sun, while your on camera flash fills in the shadows on the other side.

The above portrait was shot OUTSIDE! There was a backdrop – it was hung from a tree branch as I recall – the sun was our key light and I used my on camera flash as a fill light. Did you know that a wall can be a light source? Yup! Position your model so that the sun is hitting one side of their face and the reflected light from a white wall is hitting the other side. Moving your model either closer to or further from the wall is the way you would adjust the intensity. No wall? A white car or van will work. Or a white sheet, a piece of white foam core, nylon - or ANY surface that will reflect the light. Just be careful about using colored reflectors because that will introduce a color cast to your photo. (But you are the artist, a color cast COULD be a desirable creative option!)

Is the sun covered by clouds and not creating enough of a shadow for your vision? Instead of a white reflector, use a black one. This will intensify the shadow.

Learning Photography Lighting Techniques! We see a stunning portrait...maybe hanging on a wall somewhere, and we think “WOW my work doesn’t look like THAT!” Then we run out and spend thousands of dollars buying the latest equipment - books on photography lighting techniques and so on. But it STILL doesn’t work! Here’s why... The best pros all understand something about photography lighting techniques that many of us never really “get!” What makes a portrait look amazingly real and pop off the page isn’t just the light... it’s the shadows. One key fact to always keep in mind is - Shadows Define Form! Are you getting tired of seeing the phrase “Shadows Define Form”? Sorry, but I’m going to keep repeating it because it is so important! One area of photo lighting education that is sorely overlooked and under studied is the shadow. Most of us tend to over light our photographs and thereby get rid of the shadows. True we can see the face, but it tends to be flat and lifeless. It’s not until we introduce shadow, that our photo takes on a 3D feeling and looks like a real person getting ready to step off the page. Next is a photo exercise. This one discusses light and shadow, but gets more into

how to quickly learn to work with and manipulate them. You’ll also get a feel for what looks good and what doesn’t.

Photo Exercise - 1 Put away your camera. Instead, let’s start training our eyes to see like a camera. 1. Grab two flashlights and a couple friends. 2. Have your subject sit in a chair in a darkened room. Have another friend take one of the flashlights and hold it shining straight into the model’s face. You are at the “camera” position. (You are just going to be an observer - we aren’t shooting any photos.) Make notes. See how the shadows are eliminated when the light is straight on? See how it flattens the features? 3. Have your friend hold the flashlight overhead and make raccoon eyes. Can you see it? See how unflattering the “look” is? 4. Have them hold the light behind the model creating a rim/back/separation light. See how it separates your model from the background? 5. Now, have them hold the light at about 45 degrees from the camera position and halfway to the subject. Raise the light to about 45 degrees above the model’s head. This is usually (but not always) the key light position we are going to be using in our portraits. 6. Have someone else hold a second flashlight just behind the camera position and slightly above. This is a fill light. See what it does to the shadows? Have them back up - as the light gets dimmer, the shadows get darker. See how that defines the shape? At what point does the depth of the shadow appeal the most to you? You will want to see shadow, but still be able to see all the details in the face. 7. Have them move the fill light from behind the camera to the side opposite the key light. How does that affect the “look”? Move the fill light closer and further away from the model. Where is the “sweet spot” to you? 8. Find other objects in the house and do the same sort of exercise. It may seem silly or pointless, but the more you do this, the better you will be able to previsualize how a photo will turn out. AND the better you will be at making your creative vision a reality. Soon, considering the shadows as a major component of your photos will become habit.

When we are working with shadows, we’re not only trying to make our photos more three dimensional. We can affect the mood of a photo by the color of light and the intensity of the shadows. If our creative vision calls for a light, airy, happy feel, then we will want to fill in and tone down the shadows. We’ll still have them - we want to define our shapes but we will use a secondary light source as a fill light and cut down on the depth of the shadows.

If our creative vision calls for a more dramatic or a moody feeling…we will want to intensify the shadows. It is here - in the way we record the shadows - that separates the pros from the wannabes. Yes, it is fun to read these pointers, but really do this. It’s when you actually DO the experiment that you will start to learn and start to become the master of form and texture in your photos. In only about 15 or 20 minutes, you will learn more about photography lighting techniques and how to put pizzazz in your photos than you would ever imagine. Try it! Your photos will be forever changed. AND you will immediately separate yourself from the crowd. Want to start winning photo contests? This is how! Don’t give up hope, it’s NOT impossible. In fact, the difference between a “Ho Hum” snapshot and “ART” is very small. Do the experiment and learn how to put that elusive “WOW” factor into your photography! That is an indoors experiment. Next, go to the photo exercise below and learn what to do when you are outdoors…

Photo Exercise - 2 1. Grab your camera and notebook. 2. Pick an outdoor subject - or get a friend to model for you. 3. Take a couple photos in bright sunlight, when the sun is directly overhead. 4. Come back later - around mid afternoon - and take a series of photos when the sun is about half way between straight overhead and the horizon. Shoot photos as you move all the way around in a circle with your subject in the middle. (Have your subject turn with you so they are constantly facing the camera.) We are studying what the shadows do to the photo so be sure they are in the light and not in a shaded area. Note how shadows increase the 3d appearance of the photo. 5. Position your model next to a white wall and observe how the reflected light fills in the shadows. Take a few shots with the subject at varying distances from the wall. Note how the intensity of the shadow increases and decreases. Note how the mood and feel of the photo changes. do the same thing using a black wall. What changed? 6. Finally, come back when the sun is near to or just below the horizon and shoot another series. What did the change in the color of the light do to the feel of the photo? How did it affect the shadows? In a previous lesson we did a similar exercise, but we were concerned with the color of the light at various times of day. Now we are concerned with not only the color of the light, but with the shadows. When the sun was directly overhead, we got unsightly shadows under the subjects’ eyes. This is NOT a flattering look and photographers refer to it as raccoon eyes. Paste a “raccoon eyes” photo into your notebook and below it write 3 ways you could have avoided that problem. Here’s my 3: First, don’t shoot at noon! Shoot at a time of day when the sun isn’t directly overhead.

Second, if you MUST shoot at an unfavorable time of day, use your on-camera flash to fill in the shadows created by the sun. (This is called - appropriately - fill flash.) Third, eliminate the direct light from the sun! Place the subject in an area of shade so that the sun isn’t directly shining down on their head. There are other fixes! How many can you think of? Next, look at the photos you did in the mid afternoon. See how the subject is squinting when they are looking at the sun? See how flat and dimensionless their faces appear without any shadows? Observe that, as you and your subject move around in a circle, the photos gain a 3d look as the shadows start to become visible and define the planes of the face. Observe how lightening and darkening of the shadow changes the mood of your portrait. When you get all the way opposite the sun, notice how the light circles their body. It creates a rim of light all the way around their body. This is called rim light. It could also be called a back light or a separation light.

In the final series of the day, notice how you have the shadows defining the shape, but you also have the lower Kelvin temperature which makes an appealing color cast. This is also a better time to shoot with them facing the sun. The light is mild

enough so that they can look at it without squinting. Few amateurs ever give any thought at all to the effect of shadows. Now that YOU know better…your photos will make them green with envy. AND, the idea of using shadow as a major element in the photo will never occur to them. They will scratch their heads wondering what settings you used on your camera to make your photos look so stunning – 3D - and realistic! Since shadows define shape and give our portraits a third, more realistic dimension - we need to really concentrate on studying shadows. It is every bit as important as studying the light. Body builders would look very weak without shadows defining their muscles!

Fixing Problem Areas Learning how to manipulate and predict the effect of shadows is also an important component to “fixing” problem areas. For example… One area that concerns many if not all of our subjects is - wrinkles. We all want to look younger and have that smooth skin of our youth, but age and gravity have crept in and we have wrinkles. They start out as tiny little lines and as we get older and older, they turn into crevices reminiscent of the Grand Canyon. (At least mine have.)

But really, what are we looking at? What defines our wrinkles and makes us look old? It’s the shadows! A wrinkle is nothing more than a crease in the skin. Light doesn’t make it all the way to the bottom of the crease so it creates a shadow. The deeper the crease, the larger and darker the shadow will be. If it weren’t for the dark shadow created by the light not reaching the bottom of the crease, we wouldn’t be able to see the wrinkle. So, ever wondered how to take 20 years off of your model? Lighten the shadows in their wrinkles!

NOW is the time when you want the light shining directly into your models face. Rather than coming from the side and intensifying shadow, if the light is shining directly into the face, it can penetrate the crease of the skin and fill in or sometimes even eliminate the shadow. This makes the wrinkles visually disappear - making your model blissfully wrinkle free and younger looking. On the other side of the coin, if you want someone to look older - or show that they have had a hard life… deepen the shadows in their wrinkles!

Want to visually lose 20 pounds? Have your model wear dark clothing. Everyone knows that… but why? Because shadow defines shape! Light clothing will show every bump and bulge because the shadows are so visually obvious.

If they wear dark clothing, the shadows blend into the clothing and we can’t see them. When we can’t see any shadows defining the bulges, they look much thinner. Now you know why I selected this type of clothing and lighting for my portrait... I’m fat!

Need to make a long nose look shorter? Shoot from straight ahead to foreshorten the nose and have your lighting positioned so that the nose doesn’t cast a long shadow across the face. How bright and how dark each plane and contour you are shooting will be, depends on the quantity and quality of light, the angle, the shape, texture and surface material. The more time you spend playing with the flashlight and investigating what it does to various objects and shapes, the quicker your photos will start to achieve that elusive “wow” quality.

Shadow Lighting Patterns I’m not going to go too deeply into portrait lighting patterns… they are more than adequately covered in other course volumes devoted to portrait photography. Volume 13: Building A Portrait

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007SC0LWK And Volume 18: Stunning Portrait Photography - Posing and Lighting

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007SWU27E But I will say that shadows are so important to photography that 3 of the most popular portrait lighting patterns you need to learn are named for the shape of the shadows they create!

Split Light

In split light, the face is “split” in half by shadow.

Loop Light In loop light, there is a “loop” of shadow beneath the model’s nose?

Butterfly Light In butterfly light, the shadow under the model’s nose is shaped like a butterfly.

Texture Requires Shadow! Here are a couple samples of textures. Can you imagine what they would look like without shadows? They wouldn’t exist!

That’s about it for this study of form and texture created and defined by light and shadow. Next let’s have a little bonus section on GLARE. While it has nothing to do with form and texture, it is a pretty important consideration in portrait photos and doesn’t easily fit into other “On Target Photo Training” volumes.

Glare Let’s briefly go in the totally opposite direction. Instead of being concerned with the shadows in a portrait, let’s take a second to consider glare. Glare from a person’s eyeglasses can and frequently does ruin photos. This is one of those areas where if you do it right, no one notices, but if you do it wrong, EVERYONE will comment!

Think of a billiards table. If you shoot a ball at a rail cushion, it will bounce back at exactly the same angle. If you shoot straight ahead, the ball will bounce straight back to you. If you shoot at a 45 degree angle, it will bounce off at 45 degrees. Pretty simple concept. Light does the same thing. In convoluted scientific terms, they define it as… the angle of reflectance equals the angle of incidence in an equal but opposite direction. In other words, like a billiard ball bouncing off the rail.

So, if you are lighting a model with eyeglasses - whether you are using a studio light, flash or ambient - if the light is coming from the right angle of incidence that is what causes glare in eyeglasses. For example, when the light is coming from the camera position (usually your oncamera flash) bouncing off the glasses and right back into the lens.

How to fix eyeglass glare? Here’s three fixes… First, you could have the subject wearing eyeglass frames without any lenses. No glass, no reflection. A lot of photographers do it that way. Personally, I don’t care for it. It just doesn’t look right to me. Second, you could have them raise the curved part that goes over the ear. If they raise that an inch or so, the lenses will be tilted down. The downward tilt changes the angle of incidence and the light won’t reflect back into the camera. (This is a last ditch option - it doesn’t feel right to the model and they will look self conscious.) Or third, move the light. If you are using an on camera flash, take it off the camera and have it come from the side. (Many flashes can tilt up or down so they can be bounced off the wall or ceiling.) If your lights are off to the side, the angle of reflectance will be away from the lens.

Red Eye Another common problem is the dreaded red eye. This is caused by the light coming directly from the camera, going into the eye, reflecting off the back of the eyeball and bouncing back into the camera lens. In animals, this can be a creepy looking green or blue.

Again the fix is to change the angle of your light. Take the light off the camera or bounce it off the ceiling or walls so it strikes the subject at a better angle. Many camera and flash manufacturers have tried to fix the red eye problem by having a red eye setting on the flash. What this does is to emit a rapid series of smaller flashes before the main one goes off. The theory being that these rapid pulses of light will cause the subject’s pupils to close down and decrease the amount of light entering (and reflecting back from) the eye. This really doesn’t eliminate the problem. The red eye is still there, it’s just smaller and slightly less noticeable. Plus, if you have to wait through the pulses before your shutter fires, you’ve lost the expression you were trying to get and you frequently get squinting. It’s better just to change the angle of incidence on your light.

Photo Exercise - 3 Observation training One more bit of observation training - go outside in the middle of the day and into an area where the sun is shining directly on you. As previously explained, this is what is called hard light. The light source - the sun - is very small and intense. There’s no real transition from light to shadow. The shadows it creates are dark and have a sharp edge. Now wait until the sun is behind a cloud. See how everything changes? The sunlight is hitting the cloud and being spread all through the cloud and then on to you. Now the light source isn’t the sun, it’s the cloud. This is diffuse light. The light source, the cloud, is much larger than the sun. A larger, more diffuse light source makes the shadows softer and less intense. Plus, there is a definite transition stage between light and shadow. All the shades of gray are in there now. It is now a soft light source. Remember, it wasn’t like that with a hard light source. It sharply went from light to shadow with no intermediate transition stages. It is easy to just read this and say - yah, I understand that and not go outside and experiment. Don’t do that! Don’t get complacent. Actually go out there and watch what happens. We are training your eye here, not your intellect. We are learning to see light and shadow in entirely new ways. Have you seen photographers shooting with studio lights shining through an umbrella? Or covered by a diffusion screen or a soft box? They are replicating a cloud covering the sun. They are doing that to make the light source bigger in relation to the subject so that they can better control the transition of the shadows.

Your final exercise Your last exercise for this lesson will be to pick up several of your favorite magazines and study the photographs. Bridal magazines are good for this. Examine the highlights and the shadows. Can you figure out how many lights they used? Draw a lighting diagram and try to figure out where the lights were in relation to the model and to the camera. If more than one light was used, which one was the key light? Which one was the fill light? Was the lighting hard or diffuse? Was there a separation light? How about a hair light? Paste the photo in your notebook along with the diagram, now see if you can duplicate the lighting in a photo of your own using the sun and various reflective surfaces. Don’t just read these booklets, actually get out there and do all the exercises. Even the ones that seem obvious! Once you’ve completed this training lesson along your photo journey, “Photo Mastery - Shadows, Form And Texture”, don’t lose your momentum! Head over to Amazon and get the next volume in the “On Target Photo Training” series... “Photo Composition Mastery”

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007S63PS8 Btw - If you haven’t yet gotten a copy of Volume 1 - “7 Secrets To Creating Stunning Photos!”, it’s a freebie! (but, it’s not listed with Amazon), check it out here:

http://www.OnTargetPhotoTraining.com It’s time YOU put the “WOW” factor into your photos! Good luck and I’ll see you again next time. Dan Eitreim [email protected] On the subject of learning more… The next section is a list of other training e-books by “On Target Training” (me), check them out! (TWO of them are FREE!)

Other Books By Dan Eitreim NEW! NEW! NEW! 140 Photography Puzzles!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070835072 This is a PAPERBACK not an e-book. It is a book made entirely of photography puzzles! There are: 20 HUGE Word Search Puzzles (21x21), All the words are photography terms! 40 Brain Wracking Word Scrambles, All the words are photography based - can YOU unscrambe them? 80 Cryptograms - all of them photography based quotes! Decode them and learn a LOT about photography!

Photo Exercises - Book One

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1796236519 This is a PAPERBACK not an e-book. It is a shot notebook with 60 photo exercises and 120 pages to record your results! (It is designed so you can go through it twice!)

How To Shoot Breathtaking Sunset Photographs (Free!)

http://BetterPhotos101.com

Fiction: The Photographer’s Apprentice (My First Novel!)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IQXLNH2 Additional Photo Training

Non-Fiction Here’s the “On Target Photo Training” series: Volume 1: 7 Secrets To Creating Stunning Photos! (Free!)

http://www.OnTargetPhotoTraining.com Volume 2: Master Photo Exposure

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007RO17AO Volume 3: Master Photo Shutter Speed

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007ROH230 Volume 4: Master Photo Aperture!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007RP547K

Volume 5: Master Photo Lighting... Light 101

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007RPMBNK Volume 6: Photo Mastery - Shadows, Form And Texture

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007RSCOAC Volume 7: Master Photo Lighting... Hard Light!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007S0LTPU Volume 8: Master Photo Lighting… Soft Light

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007S4ZJZM Volume 9: Photo Composition Mastery!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007S63PS8 Volume 10: Control Viewers! Make Your Color Photography “POP!”

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007SANLJC Volume 11: Shazaam! Effectively Using Photo Reflectors and Photo Filters!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007SAWZPS Volume 12: Photo Backdrop Secrets - DIY!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007SBRLHE

Volume 13: Building A Portrait

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007SC0LWK Volume 14: Essential Posing Secrets

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007SNA1RY Volume 15: Posing Mastery - Sitting, Kneeling & Lying Down

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007SNRHSU Volume 16: How To Pose... Legs

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007SOKUGU Volume 17: Strategic Posing Secrets - Hands & Arms!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007SQBG4S Volume 18: Stunning Portrait Photography - Posing and Lighting

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007SWU27E Volume 19: Correcting Facial Flaws - And Other Photo Tips!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007SYLFG4 Volume 20: Photographing Children - Tips, Tricks And Ideas!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007T07ZMK

Volume 21: How To Shoot Weddings Like A Pro

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007YJSS22 Volume 22: Model Release Templates!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00876XWSQ Volume 23: 50 Keys To Better Photography

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009FMI3JO Volume 24: How To Shoot Breathtaking Sunset Photographs – Pdf Format

http://BetterPhotos101.com Volume 25: Macro Photography – How To Shoot Tiny Stuff

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01E62Y7FQ

Volume 26: Shooting Fireworks And Lightning

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01H9DSS7W Volume 27: Photographing Landscapes And Nature

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01E7UCNOY Volume 28: Photographing Wildlife

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01E7ZQ2YG

Volume 29: Photographing Weddings – Knowing What To Shoot!

http://BetterPhotos101.com/PhotographingWeddings.php Volume 30: Photographing Families & Groups

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01E9GXEGC Volume 32: Photographing Pets

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EB93QGU

Volume 34: Travel & Adventure Photography

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01HANM0X4 Volume 35: Flash Photography

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01I22RPT6 Volume 37: How To Photograph Christmas Lights

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GWDSHQ8 Want to save some money? Check out these special bundles!

Book Bundles: “Master Photo Essentials” 4 Volume Bundle!

1. Photo Composition Mastery! 2. Master Photo Exposure 3. Master Photo Aperture 4. Master Photo Shutter Speed! http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EEHSCI6 “Master Photo Lighting” 4 Volume Bundle!

1. Master Photo Lighting - Light 101 2. Master Photo Lighting – Hard Light!

3. Master Photo Lighting – Soft Light 4. Photo Mastery – Shadows, Form and Texture https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GY1T1V9 “Portrait Essentials” 4 Volume Bundle

1. Stunning Portrait Photography – Posing and Lighting 2. Correcting Facial Flaws – And Other Photo Tips 3. 50 Keys To Better Photography 4. Model Release Templates https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GYRRM73 “Photo Posing Essentials” 4 Volume Bundle

1. Essential Posing Secrets 2. Posing Mastery – Sitting, Kneeling & Lying Down 3. How To Pose… Legs

4. Strategic Posing Secrets – Hands & Arms https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GZ18ZXT “Specialty Photography Series” 4 Volume Bundle!

1. Photographing Landscapes And Nature 2. Macro Photography – How To Shoot Tiny Stuff 3. Photographing Wildlife 4. Travel & Adventure Photography https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GZ7LW1X Want To Earn Money – Full Or Part Time – With YOUR Photography? Check Out These 4 Volumes! Volume 31: Create Stock Photos That Sell… Going From $0 To WOW!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01E9O7Y6A How To Pay The Rent With Your Camera - THIS MONTH! Volume 1

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FN41F66 How To Pay The Rent With Your Camera - THIS MONTH! Volume 2

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FN6SJ6W How To Pay The Rent With Your Camera - THIS MONTH! Volume 3

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Other Useful - Non Photography - E-books

Profits From Home

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M0HH2GH 54 Ways To Save Money On Gas!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007U00RUQ Back Pain Death

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007ZS6ZNQ How To Cure Backache Caused By Disc Problems!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0082ZRPDU

Thank You As we reach the end of this bundle of books, I want to say thanks for reading! I want to get this information out to as many people as possible. If you found these lessons helpful, please refer your friends and family to get their OWN copies! Then, be sure to check out the other volumes in this series! Now that you have gone through this “On Target Photo Training” bundle, I would greatly appreciate it if you could go to Amazon and leave a review! It only takes a few seconds, but Amazon places a lot of weight on the number of reviews and I need as many as I can get. Here is your chance to be heard - and to help others make the decision to get started improving their photography! Just go to: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GY1T1V9 Then go about half way down the page to where it says - “Write a customer review” - click the button and follow the directions. Here is my guarantee… good Karma will be coming your way - and it feels good to help out! Now, find a model and start experimenting!

Disclaimer Legal Notices While all attempts have been made to verify information provided in this publication, neither the Authors nor the Publisher assumes any responsibility for errors, omissions or contrary interpretation of the subject matter. This publication is not intended for use as a source of legal, medical or accounting advice. The Publisher wants to stress that the information contained herein may be subject to varying country, state and/or local laws or regulations. All users are advised to retain competent counsel to determine what country, state and/or local laws or regulations may apply to the user’s particular situation. The purchaser or reader of this publication assumes responsibility for the use of these materials and information. Adherence to all applicable laws and regulations, your national, federal, state or local - governing business practices, advertising and all other aspects of doing business in the United States or any other country or jurisdiction is the sole responsibility of the purchaser or reader. The authors and Publisher assume no responsibility or liability whatsoever on the behalf of any purchaser or reader of these materials. Any perceived slights of specific people or organizations is unintentional. Last Updated: August 29, 2018