Simple lighting workshop

We did a workshop on simple lighting set ups.


We were given a sheet with 12 photos of polystyrene heads with different lighting, and told to have a go at lighting them ourselves with real models.

The images we recreated were:  Row 1, 1 & 3. Row 2, 2.  Row 3, 2. I think we did ok here with the little direction we were given going in to this task.


In each shot we had to identify the key parts of the image, i.e where the light was falling and where it was not.

In the first shot you can see that almost 3/4 of the face is lit. the bottom right 'corner' is in shadow, and there is a triangle of light on the cheekbone below the eye. The shadows fall diagonally to the right of the image. To create this we placed a light up and to the left (camera view) of the face and slightly to the front to catch the cheekbone on the right.

On the next image, you can see that the face is entirely lit, as is the forehead. Joes hair comes over is forehead and so appears dark in this shot, but light is falling on it. Next you can see that the cheeks become very dark towards the back of the face near the jaw line, and there is strong shadow under the nose and eyebrows. This indicates that the light is above, to the front and angled diagonally down on to the subject. We used blocking cards to further enhance the shadows on the cheeks.

The third imag was a little harder, as the face had to drop off in to shadow, but be grey not black. We placed a light directly facing the model (side on to the camera) and used a reflector under the camera to fill in some of the shadow on the side of the face. This lightened the dark shadows to a grey tone.

The last image was simlilar to the third image, except the model was facing to the front and the light is on the other side. This time no reflector is used.

We only managed four of these images before Kevin asked us to have a go at a slightly more difficult shot:

Here we used three lights. One either side and behind  and to either side to light the sides of my face but not the front, and a further light to illuminate my hands and the 'pipe' which was also behind me, but higher up and to camera left. This third light spilled on to my shoulder somewhat and also lit that, we could have used blocking cards to blockc this light but it didn't occur to us until we had packed away.

All the lighting was quite simple and easy to replicate for these tasks. I was easier to just be working with black and white tones, and the contrasty pictures made it easier to copy as there wasn't much fill light or reflectors needed to complicate the set ups.
The results from this show we had a good idea of where the lighting was on this shot, and we have achieved a close enough image. This task was beneficial in analysing lighting.


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