cgardner
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 p.1 #16 · So what's so special about this??? | |
Micky Bill wrote:
Simple lighting is usually the best (although what 'looks' simple may be a complex setup) take a look at the oldies like Avedon and Penn...very few hairlights 
Sometimes the strobists forget that more lights doesn't always make a better picture...
Amen to that...
Nature gets by pretty well with just two: the key light of the sun and the wrap around fill from the sun reflected sunlight off the sky. Those two sources define "natural" lighting.
Except for brief periods when it rises and sets the sun is above us. Thus a characteristic of natural lighting is that it nearly always comes from overhead. Our brains figure out the shape of things like faces from how light hits them and the shadows they cast. Light from above puts highlights on the top of raised surfaces facing the light source and shadows on the opposite side. Our brains associate that downward lighting pattern with "normal" or "natural" lighting. That explains why when an artificial key light gets placed below the face, reversing the natural pattern, it looks weird (i.e. abnormal).
Once that cause and effect of human perception is grasped I think its pretty easy to figure out how to light a face to create various moods or emotional reactions. Its not a matter of one style being better or good and another worse or bad in the abstract sense of a "thou shalt never" rule, but rather whether or not the emotional reaction the lighting evokes is the one which effectively delivers the intended message.
If the desired effect is a natural appearance then placing the key light above the face would be the most effective strategy. But if the intent is to make a person look haggard, evil, sinister, etc. then the more effective strategy would be to do the opposite of the norm and put the key light level with or below the face.
The illusion of symmetry in a facial angle is created by the way the lighting pattern overlays it.
A full face pose is symmetrical looking, even in flat lighting. If you put a key light to the side and above the eye line the appearance changes to asymmetrical (i.e. lopsided) and the brighter lit side will look wider and a different shape than the shadow side.
The main difference the height of the key light relative to the face makes is in the nose shadow. Since noses come in different sizes and shapes there's no single perfect vertical angle: its a judgement call based on whether or not there is light reaching the both eyes and where the nose shadow falls whether or not where it falls is non-distracting and flattering.
As the key light moves in an arc from eye level up over the face the nose shadow changes from long and sideways to falling along side the nose and when the light is directly in line with the nose two things happen: the shadow falls out of sight under the nose (if the camera is above the eye line and nostrils are hidden) and the lighting pattern, like the camera angle, becomes symmetrical. That combination, full face and vertical axis lighting is the only combination which does render a face perfectly symmetrical in that view.
The Catch-22 is that few people actually have perfectly symmetrical faces and full face is for most people the least flattering view because their face looks very wide. Models tend to have, by natural selection by photographer faces which are both perfectly symmetrical and slim and are flattered by a full face pose. That's one of the pitfalls of learning lighting patterns with a mannequin which its modeled on the ideal of being slim, symmetrical with an ideally shaped nose. Real faces rarely are that attractive.
Most people are flattered most by a well balanced oblique view with short lighting on a dark background. The facial angle of an oblique view is asymmetrical and will make the face look as wide as the side of a barn if flat light. But magic happens when that asymmetrical view is overlaid with an asymmetrical lighting pattern from the opposite direction which highlights the "short" front side if the head - the front mask of the face - and puts the broad side of the face into shadows. On a dark background the shape of the facial "mask" defined by the highlight looks both slim and perfectly symmetrical, even if the face actually isn't because the facial angle hides the far side of the face and the shadows hide, to varying degrees depending on the amount of fill, the side facing the camera.
This gets us to the point where the question "Do we really need to add more lights?" is germane.
What makes the short lit oblique pose work to make a face slim and symmetrical isn't just where the highlights are placed on the front of the face, but the fact there are shadows placed on the side of the face are what is creating the contrasting pattern perceived by the brain as slim and symmetrical. Its all an illusion of course, but that's all a photo is really: a 2D pattern of contrast which tricks the brain into thinking its looking at a 3D object by triggering memories of 3D objects experienced with binocular vision and the sense of touch.
When a third accent light on glancing off the shadow side of the face is used in an oblique pose or a reflector is placed on the side of the face pointing at the shadow side ear instead of the front of the face what happens perceptually is a reduction in the contrast which the key and fill have created which has made the face appear slim and symmetrical. When light is added back onto the shadow side of the face from a direction opposite the fill the net effect will be to make the face look wider than when simply short lit, and less symmetrical than the oblique / short lit combination tricks the brain into thinking it is.
A light glancing off the side of the face will also usually create a brighter, more specular reflection on the skin than the key light modeling the front of the face. That contrast of bright highlight in the middle of the shadow side of the face will always distract attention off the darker front of the face.
A hair light can work effectively to show the viewer where the head and face is in the overall photo. The more jumbled and confusing the background the more important that visual clue is, because the viewer can't react emotionally to a face they haven't found yet. Common sense, no? But overdone a "nuclear" halo of a hair light will become a distraction from the darker face once it is found. There needs to be a very subtle balance of "Psst... here's the face. Oh, you see it? OK forget now about me and concentrate on the face."
Before adding a hair light as a knee-jerk reaction ask if it is really necessary to help the viewer find the face. If the key, fill and background choice already make the face contrast well with the background -- which is mostly a matter of matching background to clothing and lighting strategy to background -- no hair light or just a very subtle soft one may be needed to reveal a bit of detail and texture. For example note that in the photos of the young girl in the riding gear the "hair" light is actually only hitting her dark jacket? Not an accident  It's a trick I learned from observing how news sets and TV interviews are typically lit, not from any lighting text.
The best question to ask before adding that third, fourth, fifth or sixth light is: "How will the additional highlight and shadow contrast this light creates attract the attention of the viewer in the photo? Will it pull their attention towards what is important - the eyes and mouth - or distract them away from the front of the face once there?
Again there's really no binary "good" or "bad" in that cause and effect in the abstract because in some types of photos containing people such as fashion, glamor, advertising or editorial the face might not be the intended center of attention and "star" of the show. But whatever the intended center of interest is in the the shot all its elements - background, clothing, props, lighting, composition - should work together to pull the viewer towards it and keep their attention focused there. Like a short lit oblique view of a face on a dark background using tonal contrast, or butterfly lit full face view on a white one of a woman in a white shirt using color contrast. The key factor in both cases is using a lighting strategy which makes the front of the face contrast with the background.
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