Hunter-Ch05.qxd
11-01-2007
02:28 PM
Page 93
REVEALING SHAPE AND CONTOUR
thin or has very vertical sides. The tonal variation produced by the single overhead light may be too extreme, and compared with the top of the subject, the front and side are too dark. This can even happen for a shallow, flat subject (such as an audio amplifier) if the detail in its front is highly important and what’s on top is not. Figure 5.12 shows a bit of this problem; it’s not terrible the way it is, but a little more light on the front of the subject would be nice. The most obvious solution to this problem is to add another light to fill in some of the shadow. This is not always the best solution, nor is it always necessary. Placing the fill light to one side may cause competing shadows, such as those shown in Figure 5.9. But placing the fill light over the camera may light the subject too evenly. That costs the very depth we are trying to achieve. We can avoid adding problems by using a fill light that is as soft as possible and as dim as possible, provided it is still bright enough to do its job. If the fill is soft, the additional shadow will be too poorly defined to compete. If the fill is dim, a competing shadow will not be dark enough to be visible. Keeping the fill soft means using a large enough source. A very rough rule is to use a fill light near the subject that is about half the size of the main light. Brighter fill lights usually need to be larger, but weaker ones can be smaller without creating noticeable extraneous shadows. Sometimes a simple reflector card provides enough fill. We can add reflector cards on each side of the subject or directly under the camera. The amount of fill light affects both the brightness of the subject and the amount of the ground shadow lost. Our choice of fill card will vary with both the subject and the background. Figure 5.13 was made with a silver reflector card to the right of the doll. The light gray background reflected enough light to eliminate any need for a fill card to the left of the subject. A white background might have reflected so much light that we would have needed no reflector cards at all. A black background would have reflected so little light that we would have needed stronger fill. We can use any combination of reflector cards and additional lights, depending on how much fill the specific subject needs. The least amount of fill we are likely to use is the light reflected from a light background surface on which the subject sits. In those cases we may also decide to put a black card on one side
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