Chapter 8 Lighting

This chapter relates to the classes when we set up the lighting sets to practice working with them.  I practiced using some of these lighting techniques when shooting the still life photography project. I tried diffuse light by shooting in natural light through a see through curtain.  I tried using back light using a flashlight; I also turned on another light farther away to help light the front of the subject.  It was difficult to get the correct settings of aperture and shutter speed to go with the lighting conditions when I was changing the light so frequently.  I did not use fill light when shooting the still life project but I did use fill light when I was shooting the class portraits for the amalgamation project. 

I usually prefer to use a harsher light when I shoot photographs of the landscape.  I like when I shoot landscapes when I can clearly see the shadows in the photograph.  When I take pictures of people I prefer to use diffuse light or fill light.  I prefer to use natural light for all of my photographs over artificial light.  When I use artificial light I have to worry about how close the light source is to the subject and what temperature the light source is.  I have to set the white balance myself sometimes because the automatic white balance does not have a setting that works with every light source. 

I don’t normally use the built in flash on my camera.  I think it makes the image look too harsh in the foreground and loses a lot of background information.  I could see from some of the pictures in the book that using the flash with another light source could change that.  I think using bounce flash instead could make an interesting portrait and it does not make the photo look as harsh as the built in flash.  

Back lit still life