Why Lighting Is So Important

Why Lighting Is So Important

by William Lulow

I have said many times that light is the real determining factor in a photograph’s success. It influences everything in our daily lives, but especially where making images is concerned. It can determine how you feel about a certain subject. It can determine how much of that subject you can see. It can sometimes even make you see more than you thought you saw initially. And, it controls your perceptions of the world in front of you.

Here are just a couple of examples:

Here is the exact same scene taken on different days when the lighting was quite different.  Nothing was done to either image in post-processing.  The only difference is that the sun was illuminating one brightly but not the other. The left image was made on a normally cloudy day while the one on the right was taken in bright sunlight. It’s a slightly different angle because they were taken, naturally, on different days when the lighting was totally different. Now you can argue about which you prefer, but that’s the point. The difference in the light alters your perception and thus your feeling toward each. The one on the right is “warmer” in tone because that’s what direct sunlight does. The one on the left is “cooler” because that’s what a cloud cover does.

So the differences in something simple like clouds can impact your reaction to an image. And thus, light can be used to evoke those feelings. Light artificially created in the studio can do similar things. Look at these two portraits:

The one on the left was made outdoors with natural sunlight and a flash fill-in light on the camera. The one on the right was made in the studio with a single, 500watt, incandescent light bulb in a 12″ reflector filled in with a second, 250watt, incandescent light bulb in a 12″ reflector. Since the fill-in light on the right hand image was about half the power of the mainlight, the initial shadows were preserved. In the left-hand image, there was just an overall fill-in light produced by a large reflector on my portable flash unit mounted on the camera, so the subject’s entire face was filled in.

Think about how each makes you feel as a viewer. Which looks more “natural” ? One, though is much more “upbeat” than the other. What does that do for your mood?

This is the way that light can control our emotions. It’s good to study all these effects if you want to do portraiture.