Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Photography major - Artificial light shows the texture of an object.

Artificial light shows the texture of an object.

In this exercise, we will use lighting technology to vividly photograph the texture of sliced bread or cut bread. From the scenery shown in the above picture, you can see the bread that is divided into two and placed vertically. The purpose of this arrangement is to reveal how the surface of bread changes with the change of light direction.

Figure 1 1.24 shows the effect of shooting the main light through the cross section of the left half of the bread at an angle of 90. Because the strong light area and shadow area are more prominent, the hidden place on the cross section of bread is similar to the small hole at a glance. This beam of light is also directed at the cross section of another piece of bread, but this cross section is irradiated from the front. The light it receives is so bright that there is almost no shadow, so we can't actually see the texture of bread. This shows that the key point of this exercise is that if you want to express the texture of the surface of an object, you have to let the light shine vertically from one side of the subject and let the light pass through the surface of the subject.

Then, is it necessary to add auxiliary lights or reflectors? No need. If you want to express the texture incisively and vividly, you don't have to. Light in the shadow tends to weaken the strong light area of the bread cross section. Since the object you are facing actually has this texture, you certainly don't want to weaken it.

The only effect you want to add may be that the upper part of the background darkens (that is, the upper right part of figure 1 1.26). In the practice of shooting apples in front, you just need to dim the main light until the shadow line of the main light falls to the appropriate position behind the apple. But please pay attention to the present situation. If you just dim the main light, when it moves to the position where the shadow falls on the background directly behind the bread, the shadow will also fall on the bread. Obviously, this is not what you want. What you need is that the main light shines completely on the bread and the background is in the shadow.

There are two solutions.

One way is to turn on the main light, not downward, but toward the camera. At this time, the back edge of the reflector will produce a shadow. When the main light turns to a certain point, the shadow will fall where you need it in the background, while the subject is still in the illumination range.

Another method is to separate the lamp from the remote main lamp. It can be achieved with wooden boards. See figure 1 1.27 for specific operation. Carefully move the board into position and observe the change of the shadow. Move the chessboard back and forth until the shadow line appears in the ideal position behind the bread.

The second way to feather light is to separate some light, which is the basic skill of professional photographers. In fact, most of the lamps in professional photography studios have their own folding plates around them, as shown in figure 1 1.29. We call it a light shield. The light barrier allows professional photographers to easily and accurately control the type of light emitted by each lamp. If the photographer wants to cut off the light in a specific area of the scene, he only needs to move the corresponding folding plate into the light path until the shadow falls exactly where he needs it. As far as the existing conditions are concerned, wooden boards can be used for positioning, as shown in figure 1 1.27, to achieve the same effect as the hood folding plate. Finally, if you want to further make your studio lighting equipment more professional, you must undoubtedly equip them with a hood.