Assignment Four: Light

Introduction

My tutor’s advice for this assignment was specifically to not be creative, and to simply demonstrate the learned concepts. He was also explicit about the importance of choosing a subject that’s features would make showing the four concepts of shape, form, texture and colour achievable, and also materials to avoid, such as chrome and glass.

With all this in mind, I chose a piece of pottery in the shape of an elephant that we have in our cabinet at home. It has an easily identifiable shape, has elements of relief, a textured surface, and strong colour. It also lacks any surfaces that reflect or transmit light.

My ‘studio’ setup consists of a small stand and white seamless backdrop purchased over the internet, and standard adjustable work lamp with the shade removed. Where necessary I used my home-made diffuser that I created for previous exercises, and a piece of black card was used as the background in one of the images.

As suggested by my tutor, I then paired the four studio images with similar images taken with natural light. This proved more challenging, mostly due to waiting for a day where I had free time but that wasn’t overcast! The daylight pictures also involved moving the subject rather than the light source, which provided an interesting alternate scenario to the studio images.

Images

 

 

85mm, f/5, 1/8, ISO 100 -1EV

Shape – Artificial Light

 The obvious choice to show shape is a silhouette, so I positioned the light directly behind the subject, but shining through the seamless backdrop. The camera compensates for the extreme brightness in the scene by reducing the overall exposure, rendering the subject as a silhouette. The unique shape of the elephant leaves no doubt as to what the viewer is seeing, even with complete lack of detail or colour. I decided to change the colour balance to cloudy, which significantly warmed the image, and this combined with placing the subject on an undulating surface almost gives the impression of the sun setting on an African landscape. 

 

85mm, f/5, 1/3, ISO 100 1/3EV

Form – Artificial Light

 

There are several cues that the brain picks up on to decide that what the eyes are seeing is a three-dimensional object. One of the cues is tonal variation – that is, the varying amounts of light striking the various facets of the object. I have attempted to capitalise on that in this image by using a light behind, to the side and slightly above the subject. This causes a gradient of light/shadow on the curved back of the elephant, as well as varying light levels elsewhere on the subject, especially the trunk area. The other element in the image giving a three-dimensional effect is the long shadow stretching towards the lower left corner, although this gives depth to the scene as a whole, not to the subject itself.

 

62mm, f/5, 0.4s, ISO 100 -1 1/3 EV

Texture – Artificial Light

For this image I placed the subject flat on the table, and used a ‘raking’ light across the surface of the subject. This type of lighting creates a highlight on one side of each particle and a shadow on the other side. I used a ‘hard’ (undiffused) light source to ensure the shadows were sharply defined. Initially the concept of texture wasn’t being realised as much as I’d have liked, and I realised the white seamless backdrop I was using was acting as a fill card and lightening the shadow side of each particle. To rectify this I placed the subject on a black surface, which absorbs rather than reflects the light. 

 

62mm, f/8, 0.5s, ISO 100

Colour – Artificial Light

For colour I wanted even lighting across the subject, without strong highlights and shadows which would alter the colour of the subject. I recalled times when I’ve taken photos of flowers outdoors, and I almost always shoot those kinds of images on overcast days as the sun’s light is diffused through the clouds, creating even lighting and making the colours ‘pop’. For this image I used frontal lighting, with the lamp positioned next to the camera, and shone it through my diffuser onto the subject. This makes the golden-orange really stand out from the white backdrop, and almost entirely eliminates the distracting shadows that would appear behind the subject. In post-production I used the white balance eye-dropper tool on one of the small white circles to compensate for the colour of the incandescent bulb in the lamp. Looking at my previous three images, none of those exhibit the true colour of the subject as well as this soft frontal lighting does.

 

195mm, f/11, 1/100, ISO 800 -1EV

Shape – Natural Light

For the series of images taken in natural light, I decided to experiment with black and white conversion, to see if this enhanced the interplay of light and shadow that forms the basis of this assignment. For this image, instead of another silhouette I decided to see if I could achieve edge-lighting, which highlights the shape of a subject. The position of the subject and my own parallel viewpoint I believe worked well here, with almost the whole outline of the model lit, emphasising the many curves to the object. I underexposed by one stop in order to further reduce the detail of the subject, bringing attention to the concept of shape.

 

85mm, f/4.5, 1/400, ISO 100

Form – Natural Light

 

This is a similar image to the one taken in artificial light, but with a lower viewpoint. Here I am relying on just the light/shadow combination on the subject itself rather than clues such as a drop shadow. This was partly due to necessity (the one place I had light streaming through the window was very limited in terms of workspace) but also proved a useful challenge, in terms of positioning the subject and camera to get the impression of form.

 

270mm, f/11, 1/1250, ISO 1000 -1 EV

Texture – Natural Light

 

As in the previous ‘texture’ shot, I positioned my subject perpendicular to the incoming light. I also decided to use my telephoto lens here, to negate form and shape and to really focus on the texture of the subject. This close-up view really evokes a tactile response from me, which is also what I’d hope from other viewers.

 

85mm, f/18, 1/40, ISO 1600

Colour – Natural Light

For this image I thought I’d need to wait for an overcast day in order to get the ‘large’ natural light source needed for good colour representation. In direct sunlight the colour would look washed out, and in shade the colour can have coolness to it due to the light being reflected from the blue sky. However, I noticed that as I was indoors, I could place the subject in the shade where the light was actually being reflected from the neutral-colour walls. I realised that the colour of the subject in my test shot was actually a good representation on its real colour due to this. Unfortunately for obvious reasons I wasn’t able to represent this natural light image in black and white.

Meeting the Assessment Criteria

Demonstration of Technical and Visual Skills

Much of my knowledge gained in this part of the course came from the book Light Science & Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting. It was very informative on a subject I knew very little about before starting this part of the course, but now feel that I have successfully portrayed each of the four subject characteristics using both an artificial light source, with additional tools such as gobos, reflectors and fill cards and also natural light using no extra resources other than positioning the subject and camera.

At the forefront of my mind while creating the images for this assignment was making sure that it was obvious for each image which characteristic was being showcased. I believe that I have used my new-found knowledge and techniques well to successfully accomplish this, and that the end result is clear.

My post-production skills have increased considerably over the time I have been undertaking this course, and I feel I have used them effectively although sparingly in this assignment. Much of the work was done in-camera, with just the occasional tweak to white balance, sharpening and straightening.

Quality of Outcome

I am happy with my resulting images for what proved to be a challenging assignment. I feel that the images meet the brief but some also make compelling images in their own right; I particularly like my images for ‘shape’.

Demonstration of Creativity

Largely this was a technical assignment, and my tutor specifically advised against an attempt of being too creative as this can easily distract from fulfilling the requirements of the brief. As such I have almost exclusively kept this as a technical task, however elements of creativity can be seen in ‘shape – artificial light’ with an attempt to recreate an African savannah.

I think creativity in this area could be further developed when more experience with lighting has been gained. Experience would allow for creative flair while still retaining a focused and effective use of lighting.

Context

The Nikon School – Guide to Creative Lighting DVD allowed me to see two photographers using lighting (mostly artificial) in real-life situations, both in a studio and on location. The photographers talked about and demonstrated the three main facets of light in photography: direction, quality and colour. This gave me some great insight, and allowed me to manipulate those three elements of light to produce my own photographs. Light Science and Magic enabled me to understand lighting theory and terminology; Guide to Creative Lighting allowed me to see those things put into practice.