Lighting

After the Talking Dog project, which was a bit of a baptism of fire, I have decided that the best thing to do with the lighting for my final project is to have roughly the same set-up for every shot. This will hopefully speed up production considerably and provide a bit of continuity; so much time was spent sorting out the lighting for talking dog, as each shot was lit separately, which when you have forty odd shots gets a bit ridiculous. The need may arise for a specific lighting effect on certain shots in which case I can jiggle with the set-up a bit but I am hoping that with sufficient planning I will only have to set-up the lights once.

So what sort of lighting am I going to use? A very good question. This slideshow of some of my concept art shows how my ideas have changed throughout the project: Initially I wanted the whole thing to look quite dark and dingy…lots of hard light, silhouettes, fast fall-off etc. Since deciding to change the entire set so that it is white, essentially making it one giant reflector, everything has got a lot brighter and sparse looking. The last two drawings show the current idea that I am going with; in the first the lighting is perhaps a bit too harsh but the second, showing the statues in more detail shows a softer light, which I prefer.

And how do I intend to achieve this? Well, I’m probably going to keep things as simple as possible and stick to a rough three-point lighting system, although I’m not a big fan of back lights; I don’t like the whole glowing outlines look. From just messing around with some lights in the studio I have found that you can do a surprising amount with just one light and a couple of well placed reflectors. These photos where all shot with just a sidelight and two reflectors, one on the other side of the subject and the other behind and just above the camera. The background I’ve used also acts as a reflector, which is one reason why I made my set white because I like the contrast between background and subject. If I do shoot with the aperture wide-open I will have to be careful that the whole thing doesn’t wash-out though.