Tuesday, March 24, 2015

It's All About The...Lighting!

In my television production class we have been studying the importance of lighting. As an experiment we went into our TV studio and the students and I took pictures of each other with different lighting arrangements. Here are some of the results:

Cailyn Barnes is shown with lighting just from the studio's ceiling lights. None of the powerful and subtle TV studio lights are turned on in this shot.

Cailyn is lovely (as always!) but if this was for a real television interview or program, the lighting on her needs to be much better.










Some main studio TV lights have been turned on now. The lighting on Jessica Edwards is noticeably better than Cailyn's. But it's almost too harsh. The main or key light is too much directly in her face.

This is an example of flat lighting, which our textbook says produces "uninteresting pictures with little depth and modeling."

So we need to make some adjustments to achieve a nicer, more flattering lighting combination.







This is much better with a three point lighting arrangement. We've adjusted the key light so it's more at an angle to her face. A fill light, with a less bright, softer exposure, is to her right and high, so the right side of her face is lit. And another subtle light was placed behind her to her left. This backlight shines on her hair and helps give her a nice glow.

Jessica seems happier too about this lighting set up!











Another example of effective three point lighting is this image of Franklin Haigler.

You can see how the fill light to Franklin's right illuminates the right side of his face.

The backlight behind him on his left side gives Franklin an interesting glow around his head.

Looking pretty GQ FH!

I like this YouTube video on three point lighting.

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