Photography Lighting

Photography Lighting

Lighting up your subject helps make it not only easier to see, but certain lighting on certain subjects also makes the picture look better. For example, if you’re shooting people, you might want some lighting on the hair, and a special background light. The hair light makes the hair shine and stand out, and the background light would add to the picture, making the photo have its own special unique look. You also want to use some lighting on the subject’s face, but make sure not to hold the light too high, because this can cause dark circles under the subject’s eyes, and it won’t look good. You want to be sure that these lights aren’t too bright, however—this can put a glare on the camera lens, and it can also impair the look of the picture.

Photography Lighting Tips

If you’ve got a picture in which you want to make something really stand out, there are a few different ways you can light the subject. For one thing, you can darken the background by putting special lights just around your subject. Once again, though, make sure there are not too many, and they’re not too bright. Or, say you’re photographing a teenager in bright colors and a solid background. To add some spice to this, you can put a special kind of lighting gel on the background light. These gels offer many different looks, styles, and colors. For example, your subject could wear a nice white dress, and you could put a bright pink striped lighting gel on your background light. This stripes the background pink, and you can also do it with your subject. Make two different lights for the subject: one for the face and one for the body. Now you can put the striped pink gel on the light focusing on the subject’s body, but not on the face. This way, your look is achieved. Your subject, as well as their background, is striped pink, looks snazzy and fun, and there’s no pink light on the subject’s face.

Photography Lighting Techniques

There are also different things you can do with lighting. This all depends on the look you and the subject are attempting to achieve. For example, if you want a dramatic picture, you can put a dim light in front of the subject and focus it toward the top. This way, barely any light will be streaming into the background, and you’ve still got the subject. The bottom of the subject, however, will appear to fade dramatically from view.

When photographing a subject outside or in the grass, you have sunlight. Sometimes, this can work to your advantage. However, if you don’t want any light but still want the picture outside, wait until it’s dark, find a dark place to shoot the photo, and set up your own lights. When photographing people outside, you want to tell them to wear the colors that you’d normally see outside. Green, blue, red, yellow, and brown are great outdoor colors. Avoid white and black; something about the background of nature and the subject being in black and white tends to clash.