From the course: Photography Foundations: Flash

What is good flash lighting? Part 2

From the course: Photography Foundations: Flash

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What is good flash lighting? Part 2

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- This image is all natural light. It's simply direct sunlight shining into the scene. I don't have any control over the sun, so in this case my lighting is being defined by my exposure settings. I have chosen exposure settings that ensure that these highlights don't overexpose. I want to see detail in here, but I also want to have a little bit of shadow detail in here. So in this case I'm creating good lighting In any situation your exposure settings are going to be critical to your lighting setup functioning properly. This is also natural light. This is also sunlight, but this was a cloudy day, and so I'm getting a very different effect here. I don't have hard shadows. I'm still working with my exposure settings to preserve highlight detail in here. I don't want to lose any of those. I want nice shadow detail. So I'm working hard with my camera to ensure that I'm making the most of this light. But because of the clouds the light is very diffuse. It's very soft. That's giving me nice, even, gentle light through the whole situation. The edges here are dark. That's because I've added a vignette after the fact. are going to come through post-production. We've talked about the importance of highlight detail. This image is all about shadow detail. Again, natural light. Just the sun. The sun, though, is a little bit behind our subject. So this image is almost silhouette, but I didn't want it to be completely silhouette. I like having detail on the bird here. I like having detail here in the foreground. So I'm carefully managing my shadow details. That's what makes this good lighting in this case. No, I don't have a lot of highlight detail, but that's okay. What makes this image moody, what makes it effective is just the shape and the contour. So as you're seeing, there is no objective good light. In this situation, this same lighting on a portrait would be bad lighting So what constitutes good lighting is heavily influenced by your subject. Another direct sunlight image. Here we've got a lot of stuff going on. I need to be careful that this stuff doesn't overexpose, is not lost in the shadows. This is a combination of careful manipulation of my exposure, some post-production, and waiting for the sun to get into a particular position Now you might not always know why particular light looks better to you, but that's how you learn. Study those scenes when you recognize that there's good light. Try to figure out what's creating that light. Try to figure out what the quality is that is attractive to you. The most important thing The most important thing to developing a good aesthetic for light to developing a good aesthetic for light is to simply pay attention. is to simply pay attention. Do that enough and your use of light, Do that enough and your use of light, whether natural or artificial, will continue to improve. whether natural or artificial, will continue to improve.

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