Assignment, Week 6: Lighting

Theme: And in Darkness, Light.

This week we had a presentation on flash by guest speaker Michael Seeman, who's an EECS grad student and staff photographer for the Daily Californian, among other things. If you want to see some of his work, his site is at http://www.mikeseeman.com/ Mike also recommended Strobist as a good lighting resource.

In general, we usually regard flash as a bad thing when used in low-light situations - it causes pictures to be one-dimensional and flat (your light is coming from a single direction, and reflecting straight back to the camera); it causes things in the foreground to be really bright, and blacks out the background; it reflects off of shiny things, etc. etc. This is the primary reason we've avoided flash in our discussion about low-light photography: oftentimes using natural lighting, even if it means dealing with camera shake or noise, will produce much better results.

Flash, however, does have one very useful application, and that is to control the light. Even if you have plenty of light from room lights or indoors, light that you can control and direct yourself can sometimes look even better.

This week's assignment is to take a subject (preferably a person to do portraits, but if not, some random object will do), and experiment with the lighting. First take a "regular" shot using just the natural lighting, and then if you want, a shot using the direct flash. After this, start getting creative. If you have an external flash, use it! If not, see if you can use a desk lamp or floor lamp for lighting, or barring that, play around with the orientation of your subject with respect to a light source (window?).

Assignment Summary:

Find a person and do a portrait session. If you have no photogenic friends, you may use an inanimate object or animal.
Take one "regular" shot using the available light. If you want, take a "flash" shot using the flash on your camera.
Get creative with your lighting sources. Use an external flash, a house lamp, or window lighting, and think about how to orient the light source and subject together, and also where you want to shoot from.
Some general ideas:
- There are three main "directions" of lighting: direct/front lighting (light hits front of subject), sidelighting (light comes in from side of subject), and backlighting (light comes from behind subject). Which type you get will depend on your position of THREE things: the light source(s), the subjct, and you, the photographer.
- Direct lighting can be harsh, but you can generate "softer" light by either bouncing the light (reflect it off a wall, ceiling, or other surface before it gets to the subject), or diffusing it (shine the light through something, like paper or cloth).
- A lot of the techniques that we demonstrated with flash can be done with a simple desk lamp/floor lamp, especially if you can angle them in whatever way you want. You won't get the super-fast burst of light that makes photos sharp, but you can still do things like manipulating the direction, bouncing off walls/ceiling, or diffusing.
For some ideas, see the sample gallery here: http://photodecal.org/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=118
Upload photos here: http://photodecal.org/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=7523
The theme for the week is "And in Darkness, Light."