15.05.2012

TAOP

Part 4: Light.

Project: Photographic Lighting.

Exercise:  Softening the Light.

Object: To explore the effects of using a diffused source of light.

The subject for this was a pair of pistols on my kitchen work top.  This gave a good mixture of surfaces and textures.  

The first was taken with a naked light set about one metre above.  There are harsh reflections off the shiny metal and another off the work surface.  The shadows are so harsh that there is little detail outside the directly illuminated areas.  Very contrasty with blown highlights and shadows that are too deep.

The second was taken with a sheet of kitchen towel held in front of the light.  The change was very obvious and for the better.  The harsh reflections had been mollified and the texture of the various materials was more evident.  The shadows were not so sharp and deep, and details not visible in the first image were now available.  There was a pleasing reflection of the pistols in the work surface which was not there before.  This is still a high contrast image but here it is more controlled and the contrast does not become a problem.  

The addition of this simple diffused has made a great improvement.

Exercise: Shiny Surfaces.

Object:  To not appear in the reflection of a shiny surface.

After failing to build a light cone that would stand up I went out and bought enough white card to build a cylindrical light box.  The results for the vertical view are below.  They are in order, naked light from above, direct diffused light from above and finally bounced diffused light from above. What ever lighting I tried I ended up with a similar and equally poor result.  Eventually I gave up and built the contraption you can see below and got a much more pleasing result.  

Open top with me reflected.

Covered top and direct diffused light.

Covered top with bounced diffused light.

Light box.

Image taken using above contraption

Exercise: Contrast and fill in.

Object:  To examine the effects of various reflective surfaces.

The still life was a bowl containing two carved wooden bananas and a real apple.  The main light source was from the right and the reflector was placed to the left.

I am not going to reproduce all the shots of this set but will show the single light image and the one I think the best of the rest, which was the one with the crinkled foil reflector.  There were subtle differences between them all with the bare card having little effect, the dull side of the foil giving a grey cast and the shiny side giving a rather bland and featureless in fill.  The crinkled finish foil broke up the reflected light and gave the image more body.

Single light.

Added crinkled foil reflector.

The portrait of Dorothy Norman lacks any detail except for the face.  One is forced to look into her eyes.  Here is  the face of a woman of strong moral conviction and great integrity.  To soften the shadow area would take away much of this portraits power and reduce it to just another family snap.

The portrait of Guadelupe Marin de Rivera is dominated by her hair.  The plain white background allows the wildness of the hair to fill the frame.  There are two other factors that give the portrait power.  One is the low angle of the camera and the second is the shadow that this low angle allows.  Had the shot been taken from a higher position it would have lost a lot of its interest.  

14.05.2012

TAOP

Part Four: Light.

Project: Artificial Lighting

Exercise: Night Photography.

Equipment: Olympus E3.

Sky scrapers in Deal.  There’s a concept.  

The shots I have taken for this exercise represent the night scenes in the area.

The first is of the Deal taken from The Pier.  It was taken, as was suggested, just before full night so that some texture was left in the sky.  To render the colour of the town and The Pier with something approaching reality I had to let the sky and the sea drift off to a dark blue. This is partly tempered by the reflection of the town in the sea.   I played with various camera positions, increasing and decreasing the amount of pier and taking the image with different horizon heights.  This is the one I liked best, with a busy lower half balanced by the dark and deep expanse of sky.  The picture is based on two strong triangles.  The first is formed by the left side of the frame, the line of illuminated buildings, and the pier itself.  The second is the raised part of the pier which disappears at a vanishing point at the landward end.  There is an implied triangle formed by the pier and the row of lights.  The position of the nearest light stops the eye from being constantly led to the landward end of the pier and allows the viewer to look elsewhere.  

2.5sec @ f8.  

The second is my bridge over road shot and was the culmination of 30 minutes of shooting.  The whole of east Kent must go to bed at sundown as this was the busiest of the shots.   I closed the lens down to its minimum of f22 to extend the time and have the best depth of field.  Tripod mounted, the camera was allowed to look after the exposure.  The only change I have made is to the colour balance which I did in Photoshop by changing the colour temperature and playing the the tint slider.

50secs @ f22.

The third is an evening shoot of a large pond lit from the side by sodium lights.  The difficulty was to allow enough natural light to illuminate the scene without having the sodium lamps drown it out with their orange glow.  I tried playing with the exposure settings  to see the effect but settled for this one.  Any darker and detail disappeared, any lighter and it looked like washed out daylight rather than evening.  The sky was a little pale and bland so I allowed the low branches of a tree to fill the space.  the water was mirror flat so the reflection of the trees at the far end work rather well.  I left the lamps way out on the left as they became more dominant as I let them further into the shot.  I used them merely as an indication as to how dark it really was.  As with the image above I tweaked the colour by using the colour temperature and tint sliders.

1/2sec @ f4.5.  Jammed against a tree for steadiness.

The last is a night shot of Dover Castle.  The castle is lit by strong orange lights that I have managed to correct with the same technique as before, namely by playing with the colour temperature and tint.  The power of the Castle is well demonstrated sitting as it does above the town and guarding all approaches.  

1sec @ f4.

10.05.2012

TAOP

PART FOUR. Light.

Project: Photographic Lighting.

Exercise: The lighting angle.

Equipment: Olympus E3 with a Metz 58 AF-1 linked off camera by radio.  Light diffused through an Interfit 5 in 1 diffuser/reflector.

I lit the subject as instructed allowing the TTL metering to look after the exposures.  

All the shots had a pleasing soft edge to them unlike some experimental shots I took without diffusing the light.

Front. Scary Tiger.  The low angle of the light has illuminated the features from below giving the classic horror film look.

Right and Left.  Both of these lacked lighting balance.  The lit side was fine but the unlit side lacked both detail and warmth.  A bit of fill in reflected light would have improved this.

Rear.  Not quite a silhouette but close.  With some front lighting this could have been turned into a pleasing shot.  As it stands it has little to recommend it.

High front.  Best so far.  Pleasing overall lighting with some modeling  of the features, especially the lower part of the face.  The shadows under Tiger give it substance.  Without using additional lighting this is about as good as I could do.

High rear.  This lighting picked out the edged of Tiger and back lit his fur nicely.  The sort of lighting used to back light hair and light clothing.  With added lighting would look great.  

High Left and Right.  Both pleasing pictures.  The raised height of the light source has improved the modeling of Tiger and given him some shape. 

 Top Back.  A version of the High Rear shot that illuminates more of Tiger’s front but to no great improvement.  I would rather add front lighting to the High Rear shot than to this one.

 Top  Centre.  This lighting gave effective but harsh modeling.  The shadows under the head were over dark and contrasty.  Soft top lighting can help to highlight hair but here the lighting is too harsh.

 Top Front.  This, for me, is the best of the bunch.  Good 3D modeling and a feeling of body.  The shadows are not over harsh and the shadows both under Tiger’s head and under is body give him solidity.