With the butterfly lighting at the top left hand corner of this contact sheet, it is visible that the shadows are being cast downwards and darkening features such as the eye sockets and cheek bones. The lighting, in relation to the subject, is positioned above them and tilted a little bit behind the subject to really exaggerate those harsh shadows. Additionally, this lighting was very hard as no diffusion was present (no umbrellas, etc...) meaning that these shadows are very crisp and clean lined because their is no diffusion to blur the shadows with the highlights. To cast those deep shadows, I also had my subject tilt their head ever so slightly back so that I could additionally capture the shadows that were cast by the eyelashes. Butterfly lighting is great for exaggerating certain features such as cheek bones and eye sockets, however it is also effective at making someone appear older as this lighting exaggerates and makes fine lines and wrinkles more prominent. Shifting to the left and moving onto Rembrandt lighting, we can distinguish the notable signs of this style, the triangle of light present on the subject's shadowed cheek. This style is reminiscent of Rembrandt's paintings as he would use this style of lighting, including that triangle of light, which was the reason for its name. The lighting for this style was fairly challenging as creating a light triangle of a fairly decent size took many trials and including many errors. To properly demonstrate this lighting style I had to position the light at a 45° angle to the subject so that the light would highlight one side of the face and just peak over the bridge of the nose to form the triangle on the shadowed sign. This light fell on the left side of my subjects face and just barely peaked over her nose to, in my opinion, form an amazing Rembrandt style of lighting. Onto the bottom row, starting at the photo on the left, this style is split lighting, which is self explanatory as the lighting splits the face in half leaving one half perfectly lit and the other half in the dark. To create this effect I had to position the light directly to one side of the subject, and make it so that the light was facing the subject straight on from that side. This positioning let the subject be split in half, and the light perfectly carved those halves of her face out with a hard line, making a clear distinction between the two opposite sides. Lastly, three-point lighting will finish this contact sheet off. At the bottom right of this sheet we can see that the subject has one side of their face light from a light that is positioned diagonally from them, and then the background is lit from the same side as the other light, and then the shadowed side of the face has some highlights near the jaw, caused by a third light source, a white card. All of these elements together formed a very flattering lighting as it makes the subject's face attractive because of the varying lit high points and shadowed low points that are created. These varying focal points caused by the lighting attracts and draws the eyes to the face and makes them examine the face as their eyes are guided throughout the portrait by the transitions from light to dark. Additionally, this lighting is very soft and smoothes out the skin and makes the subject look youthful as if I removed the umbrella and had a hard light on my subject, the lines and wrinkles present on the subject's face would have been exaggerated, ruining the beauty present with soft lighting.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Sections
All
|