Week 4: Lighting

Today we focused on lighting. We learnt about natural and artificial lighting and how to use light in favour of our shot.

Light is the key to the look, mood and atmosphere of photographs. The direction of light will affect the shape and texture of the subject, the colour and how soft or harsh the light can really change the subject's appearance. These three factors are the basic characteristics of light. 

To tell us about the lighting, looking at shadows is a good method. Harsh and direct light creates strong and well-defined shadows and vice versa. The location of a shadow tells us where the light is coming from as shadows are always opposite the light.

We did four different activities related to lighting in this week:

In the first activity, we got two lamps and cut out coloured gels that were slightly larger than the lamp itself. Then we taped the gels onto the lamp. When we switched the lamps on, we got a nice background colour on our neutral background. Next, we experimented with these lamps by changing the distance between the lamp and our object we brought in (I brought in a small decorative vase) and by putting different coloured gels onto the lamp for a variety of effects. 

Here are some photographs I took during this activity. 

A challenge during this activity was that I couldn't get the tripod sorted out and it was hard to keep my hand steady without a tripod. 

In the second activity I played with bokeh. Firstly, I had to create a bokeh lens and I did this by making a fake lens hood that fits my lens, then I cut out a circle that was as wide as my lens. I stuck one of the bokeh templates onto my circle and then set my camera to the lowest aperture value and experimented. I went to this really dark room where some fairy lights were set out and took photos of the lights. I found this pretty hard and the photographs I took were pretty messed up. 

In the end, I took off my bokeh lens and took regular photographs of the fairy lights. This was also challenging because I had to set my camera to the correct settings to get decent photographs where the lights were just a tiny dot in the dark background. The settings I used was the lowest aperture value, a super super super slow shutter speed and an ISO about 400. My end product was this: 

The third activity was to build a box studio which was then used to photographs outdoor. However, I only got to make my box studio but was unable to take any photographs because I ran out of time. 

Building a box studio was done by...

1. Get a cardboard box, tissue paper, white card, strong tape, a cutting knife and a cutting board

2. Strengthen the cardboard box by taping the bottom of the box and remove the two flaps at the top of the box

3. Cut out windows on three sides of the box which is basically three big rectangular holes. If the sides of the box are unstable, use extra card to make it more solid

4. Tape tracing papers over the windows and white card over the two flaps on the top of the box

5. Cut out white card to fit the inside of the box as a background, this should cover the back and the bottom of the inside and have a smooth angle. 

6. You are now ready to take a photograph!

This is what the end-product would have looked like:

(picture from the internet)

I didn't get time to complete the fourth and final task which was taking a photograph of yourself with a umbrella lined with tin foil in a dark room.