Lighting Photos and Reflections
A student’s summary on Light, as gleaned from ‘Light — Science & Magic’ by Fil Hunter, Steven Biver, and Paul Fuqua
Chapter 1 summary — how to Learn Lighting
With any good time-consuming skill, lighting takes practice. We as humans who see the world with light, are already at least a bit familiar with how light works, how it looks, and what it does on shiny things. With photography, it's important to recognize the possibilities that come from 3 main principles: the size of the light source, the types of reflections, and the angle the light hits the subject.
Chapter 2 summary — light: the raw material of photography
The actual science behind light is far more complex than we need to know for photography. Light particles act a bit like the electromagnetic field around a magnet, but instead of being steady, lights not. That and Red light has less energy than blue light. We as humans can really only see a small, tiny section of the known light wave, we can’t see x-ray with our naked eye, and we can’t see radio waves.
The light we can see, we can talk about photographically. We can describe its brightness, the lights color (orange hued tungsten bulbs versus bright white or blue daylight bulbs), and contrast. Photographers can get better photos if the scene is well lit, so the brightness of a light source matters. Light comes in different colors, the sun is a more neutral white light, while either ends of the light bulb spectrum is blue/cool light and orange/warm light (even though technically blue light is hotter than orange/red toned light). Taking into account the level of contrast you want in a scene matters for light sources. Low-contrast light sources strike the subject from enough different angles that the edges of the shadows are softer and blend into the light areas. High-contrast light (think bright sunshine) gives off harsh shadows, bright well lit subjects with sharp edged shadows. In addition to the qualities of the light source, the subject affects how the light behaves. Subjects can transmit light, they can absorb it, and reflect it. Which affects how the subject looks in the photo.
Chapter 3 summary — the management of reflections and the family of angles
When photographing, we use subjects that reflect light the most, as that's what we are able to photograph. There are different types of reflection. Diffuse reflection, which means the subject, photographed at different angles has the same brightness, there is no bright shiny spot, its reflecting equally off in all directions(think thick matte paper). Direct Reflection is something very shiny, smooth or reflective, which can cause certain angles to be bad photographs, as there would be light reflected directly back to the camera. There is a family of angles that will produce the direct reflection, this helps us determine where to place or lights in relation to the subject and the camera angle. Polarized Direct Reflection is like direct reflection, but the reflections are diminished by polarized objects or polarized light sources. Polarized things cut the reflection of light down, usually to block glare.
