Exercise 38: The Lighting Angle

In this exercise, I will take multiple shot on one still life arrangement at different angles. I will continue to use the tiger because of its colour and texture. There are two angles I am adjusting, one is moving the flash unit from side to side, then up and down.

Language-wise, I will refer to these positions when moving the light up and down:

And moving the light side way.

It is too cumbersome to comment on the image one by one. I will summarize the observation here, then post the images.

1) Lighting at the same level of the subject will leave one side dark, and the other side light. By lifting the light higher at 45 degree, it lighten the dark side of the other half of the face. Like-wise, the object is better illuminated (less dark area) if we put the light at front 45 degree angle and lifted at 45 degree up.

2) My subject is a little bit flat. So front lighting at any elevation works fine. However, I was told that in portraiture with human, do not use front lighting as it flatten out the facial feature.

3) Back light on a opaque subject is a little bit awkward. I guess my kitchen is too small so that my subject is not totally a silhouette. The detail of the subject is disappearing. This happens because the exposure is not enough to preserve the details.

4) Lighting from the bottom is hard, as the tripod is too high. Anyway, the atmosphere is a little bit strange as the focus is at the bottom part of the image.

Now start with the images:

1. Light from the side, same level