Camera Use - Week 6 - Light: Directed, Reflected and Diffused

In class exercises:

1. Take a photo framing your subject with shadows in direct light:

I took this photograph under a wooden bench so that the shadows would frame the bottle in the photograph. I like how there is light glinting off the bottle exposing the light that is filtering through the setup. No artificial lighting was used in this image.

2. Take a photo with your subjects back to the sun without reflector:

For this image, I am not an advocate for the lighting. I feel it makes the image over-exposed there are far too little shadows in the frame to give any depth to the setting and image. 

 Taken with a reflector to introduce light to the subjects face:

Adding the light to Huia's face helped draw my attention to her but I think the background is still too exposed and next time I will adjust my settings better to suit the climate.

3. Take a portrait using direct light:

As you can see, the light is very harsh in this photograph and I personally am not a fan of this lighting style for this image. The harsh shadows throw the image out of balance and also adds deformity, especially to the subject.

 I then took the photograph again using a reflector to soften the shadows:

This definitely softens the shadows and added a glow to her face instead of the harsh shadows we see in the previous photograph.

I then took a few images experimenting with the white, gold and silver reflectors:

White - doesn't add much light, in this case, to her face. The white seemed to blend the light in with the photograph rather than making it stand out, more than create any form of contrast between the background and the image.

Silver - adds more silver light to her face. Depending on the skin tone, background and ambient lighting, this can create a washed-out and much harsher lighting effect or add more of a glow to the skin.

Gold - adds gold light to her face. This creates a warm glow and adds heat to the photograph. However, again depending on what the colour aspects of the photograph are already, just like any reflector, this can either improve or damage the image depending on those aspects.

4. I took a portrait using diffused light from the trees and shadows:

I like the look of the trees filtering the light and creating shadows on Huia's face. I feel it helps to pull together the type of environment we were shooting in and the light creates variations of skin tones which adds depth and contrast to the over all image.

 I then added the gold reflector to help add light and therefore diffuse the shadows.

This, like I stated above, adds warmth to the image and in this case, it looks in place because of the sunlight but I fell there is so much gold that in comparison to the original photograph, it looks highly artificial and damages the natural look of the image.

Self Directed:

I took the following photographs during self directed time and also edited them. These images were taken using a reflector and ambient light cascading through the only window in the room.

Applying the lens corrections panel.

Adjusting the Basics panel to add contrast and depth to the image.

For this image, I thought it was important to make the feel a little colder than the original. I like how her freckles are more prominent in the second image once I lowered the highlights panel. Because her expression is rather bored and distant (done intentionally) I wanted the feel of the image to portray what the subject was feeling.