AW22 – Lighting Equipment, Studio Setup And Portrait Photography – LT. Studio Lighting

Question 1

Name three lighting sources and their functions.

Natural light – This is the light from the sun, blue sky gives hard light while cloudy sky gives more soft light. You can use modifiers to soften and manipulate the light to get the light you want.

Continuous light – This is the light you have continuous on in the studio. Tungsten bulb, led light, hmi and fluorescent light that is the basic light in the studio.

Flash – This light you can mount on the mount shoe of the camera or set it up external on a tripod and will go of when you hit the shutter button.

Name two light modifiers and explain the difference between them.

Softbox – As the name says, this gives a more softer light. The bigger softbox the bigger the light will be.

Reflectors – Reflectors comes in 5 different colours, white, silver, gold, black and transparent. This helps you to manipulate the direction of the light, move the light where you want it or even use the black one to absorb the light.

Draw a diagram of and describe the three-point lighting setup.

Key Light – This is the main source of light that is lightening up the subject.

Fill Light – This is the secondary light, it fills in the darker parts of the subject. It’s placed on the opposite side than the key light.

Back Light/Rim Light – This light is placed behind the subject to give the subject rim around it, by highlighting the hair and/or shoulders.

Question 2

Draw three studio setups for the following subject matters and list all the equipment that you would use to light your subjects:

Portrait

Fashion

Beauty

In a magazine or on the Internet, find one fashion shot, a beauty shot and a portrait shot and explain how you think the lighting was set up in each shot.

Beauty
Portrait
Fashion

Question 3

Take some portrait shots and pay specific attention to the lighting you use. Do one shot with soft lighting and one with more dramatic, harder lighting. It would be beneficial to hire studio lighting, but if you can’t, you may use natural light, reflectors and your camera’s flash.

Soft Light
Hard Light

Question 4

Choose a portrait photograph from the ones you took in Question 3. Create a unique movie poster for a fictional fantasy movie of your choice. Make use of different backgrounds and editing techniques you have learned.