More Thoughts About Light

Note: This is an update of an article published about a year ago.

More Thoughts About Light

by William Lulow

If you have read some of these blogs that I have been writing for over seven years now, you know that I am always interested in light, how it works and how it can be used to create beautiful photographs. As you know, the word “photograph” itself means “light picture,” and I have often told my students that once they learn the basic, classical studio lighting setups, they will never again view a photograph or look at a scene without noticing the lighting. As a matter of fact, it’s the lighting that really makes an image stand out from simple snapshots.

Here are some examples of images made with “found light” and with “studio created light”. They have one thing in common: they used light in a way to make the subjects STAND OUT in the images:

Natural Light Images

These shots were made with my iPhone 13 Pro, but the thing they have in common with the images below, made in a studio setting is that the lighting was derived from lessons learned with artificial lighting alone.

ONCE YOU LEARN THE EFFECTS OF ARTIFICIAL LIGHT, YOU WILL BE ABLE TO IDENTIFY IT IN THE NATURAL WORLD!

Artificial Light Images

The image above of the food (rollups) display was actually made in the client’s kitchen. The company was a large caterer in New York City who happened to have enough room in their kitchen to setup a mini studio. With the chefs right there, they served as the stylists making the food look great. They were shot on 4×5 sheet film with a view camera. Light was provided by a single light box (softbox), a fill-in softbox and two accent lights. I should note that these food photographs are not the kind that are used on cereal boxes or in other kinds of food advertising. This food you can actually eat. For many food photographs, the food is prepared with additives that you couldn’t really eat, for example, Elmer’s Glue to simulate milk because real milk makes cereal look soggy. Other kinds of additives for food photography include glycerin to give liquids a certain reflective shine. But in these images the food is real.

The last image here of the bulbs was shot on a sheet of clear plexiglass mounted between two saw horses. The background was a gradient paper specially made by air brush. It was positioned below the plexi table and adjusted to give just the right amount of gradient. Lighting was provided by two rectangular light boxes on either side of the set in a CROSS LIGHTING position. The characteristic of this lighting is that it produces a shadow in the middle which allowed the filaments of the bulbs to show.

Users of artificial light always want to make it look like natural light. So all of the lights and light modifiers are trying to make the artificial resemble the natural. Highlights created by the sun always enhance the overall “ambient” light that it creates in our world. A photographer therefore, can create an overall lighting for a person or thing and then add highlights by making sure that they are at least one f/stop brighter than the mainlight being used. This mimics the effect that clouds and direct sunlight create on earth.

Here is an example of a natural light image with highlights created by direct sun:

Look at the highlights created by direct sun on the water and then look at the overall, natural light shot of the beach itself. The light reflecting off the water is probably two stops greater than that on the sand. That’s why it is perceived as lighter!

The take away here is that most artificial light is or should be set up to emulate the natural kind. If the lighting looks too artificial, then the desired effect is lost. In addition, if you do any kind of commercial photography, you cannot depend on natural light to give you the effects you want, when you want them. That’s why photographers need to know how to manipulate studio lighting. Natural light is great when you find it, but you cannot always control it the way you need to.