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L A N G F O R D ’ S S TA R T I N G P H O T O G R A P H Y
‘Okay,’ I hear you say, ‘this is all well and good in the studio with movable lights, but I don’t have that luxury.’ The trick is to use the principles of these lighting set-ups with any source that you have available. If you are photographing outside, it will not be possible to move the sun to just the right position, so instead move the subject. If the sun is too high, then tilt the subject’s head up a little, or wait until the sun moves lower in the sky before photographing. It is important to teach yourself to see how the lighting in your environment is falling on your subject and then either modify the lighting to suit (e.g. move the study lamp on the side desk this way or that), or change the position of your subject to take advantage of the lighting that is available.
Lighting from above Many a photographer, wanting to avoid the flat lighting that accompanies using their camera’s flash straight on, simply flips the unit so that it faces skywards. The flash light then bounces off the ceiling and then onto the subject. The results do provide more texture in the face, but often the eyes are hidden in the dark shadows of the brows. Similar results regularly occur when photographing portraits outside when the sun is high. Top lighting is generally not used for portraiture for this reason (see Figure 23.5). Instead of bouncing your light off the ceiling, try twisting it sidewards and reflecting it off a white wall. This will give you much better results that look and feel like soft window light. If you must shoot in the middle of the day with the sun above, try adding a little fill-flash to lighten the shadows around the eyes. Most modern cameras contain the option for this flash mode and, unlike the bad old Figure 23.5 Lighting from above.
days of manual flash calculations, the camera will generally balance the daylight and flash exposures as well.
Lighting from behind Positioning your main light behind the subject can create particularly dramatic portraits and silhouettes, but in most cases the lack of detail in the subject’s face can prove disappointing. By all means play with this lighting approach as it offers very real creative opportunities, but make sure that the positioning of the subject is such that the face doesn’t become a big dark chasm (see Figure 23.6).
Figure 23.6 Lighting from behind. 148