10 Technology of Controlling Light in Portrait Photography

Lead: If you ask a professional portrait photographer, what is the most important skill of portrait photography? Everyone will answer you? Must be the use of light, mainly divided into? The choice of soft light and hard light? 、? Where is the light source? 、? Light intensity? 、? Color temperature? Four kinds. The first step in learning portrait photography is to understand the functions of these four elements and the principles behind them. Today, I will introduce some tips about 10. After reading them, I hope you can also have a basic concept of portrait photography.

1 The wider the light source, the softer the light.

On the contrary. Wide light source can soften shadows, reduce contrast and soften the texture of the subject, while narrow light source is the opposite. The principle behind it is that the wider the light source, the more directions the light incident on the object will travel, which will make the whole scene brighter and reduce the intensity of shadows.

Tip: Make full use of natural light. You can arrange the portrait main body next to a big and bright window, and don't let the sun shine directly. Windows can play the role of a soft light box, and the effect of a soft light cover can be obtained without studio lights.

The closer the light source is, the softer the light will be.

On the contrary. The principle is that the closer the light source is to the subject, the more dispersed the light source is from the subject; The farther the light source is from the subject, the smaller and narrower the light source is. Take sunshine as an example. The diameter of the sun is 109 times that of the earth, so it should be a very wide light source. But the sun is 93 million kilometers away from the earth, which only accounts for a small part of our sky, so when the sun shines directly on objects on sunny days, the light will be very hard.

Tip: If you shoot indoors with studio lights, you can control the softness of the light by changing the distance between the light source and the subject.

Soft mask can make the light wider and softer.

Taking clouds as an example, the principle is that when clouds block sunlight, the shadow of the illuminated object will become less obvious. And when the clouds are thicker, the shadows will even disappear. Clouds and fog will disperse the light. On cloudy and foggy days, the light source will become wide and unfocused, and the water vapor in the sky is like a huge soft box, which softens the sunlight.

Tip: translucent plastic or white fiber materials can be used to soften strong light. You can add a soft mask in front of artificial light sources such as studio lights; If you are in bright sunlight, you can also use a hood or soft box to soften the light.

Use reflection to soften light.

If a narrow beam irradiates a large surface with weak reflectivity (such as ground glass surface, such as wall and plastic reflector), the light will be dispersed to a larger area during the reflection process. However, if you use something with high reflectivity, such as tin foil or mirror, the reflected light will still be very concentrated and will not soften.

Tip: If you knead the tin foil (bought in the supermarket and used in the microwave oven) into a ball, unfold it and wrap it on a piece of cardboard, you can get a special reflector! This self-made reflector can add highlights to the subject.

The farther the light source is, the darker the object is.

This is common sense, right? The light will decay rapidly with the distance from the light source. However, if light is refracted, its propagation distance will also increase, and the reflected luminosity will not be as strong as direct light.

Tip: When shooting portraits outdoors in bad weather, you should use a flash, which can eliminate the shadow on people's faces and will not affect exposure value in the background. Because the light emitted by the flash is not strong enough, it will not affect the background brightness.

6 Use the intensity of light to make the subject stand out from the background.

If the light is close to the subject, the luminosity between the subject and the background will be more obvious; If the light is far from the subject, the background will light up accordingly, and the subject will not stand out like that.

Tip: If the front light of the subject comes from the window, let the subject be close to the window, and the background will be darkened. If you want to make the indoor background brighter, you should keep the subject away from the window and close to the background.

The front light will weaken the texture of the subject, while the side light, top light and bottom light can enhance the texture of the subject.

Portrait photographers usually shoot the light source on the face of the subject, so that the wrinkles of the subject will not be so prominent. Landscape photographers prefer to use sidelights to enhance the textures of rocks, sand and leaves. Generally speaking, the greater the oblique angle between the light direction and the subject, the more obvious the texture of the subject.

Tip: If you want to take pictures of Mao Mao, the furry pet, you'd better take pictures from the side, which is better than using the front light source and will make Mao Mao look more fluffy.

Shadows can make the subject more solid.

Shadow is the photographer's attempt to make the subject in the plane photo look more three-dimensional. Various lights such as side light, top light and bottom light can cast a deep shadow on the object, thus creating a three-dimensional sense. Still life, commercial and landscape photographers like to use different angles of light to create different atmospheres and effects.

Tip: Can I try it? Hollywood lighting law? Shoot a completely dramatic portrait! The method is to put the dome light directly above the main body, slightly off, and then adjust the lighting angle so that the shadow of the nose falls slightly below the person.

Backlight can be used as a light source for soft light.

Few objects are only illuminated by backlight. If a person stands in front of a bright window, the wall he faces will reflect some light and fall on him. If a person is outdoors, even if the background is bright sunshine, there will be light from the sky on the front. You can use a mirror to reflect the backlight back to the subject to increase its exposure.

10 light is colored.

Although sometimes the lights look alike? Colorless? We call the color of light the color temperature. It's just that our eyes and brain will automatically adjust and perceive, which makes it difficult for us to detect. But digital cameras and films will record colors that we can't see. The sunshine in the morning and evening is warm, and the shadow cast by the sunshine at noon is very blue. For digital cameras, you can use the white balance function to eliminate or emphasize the color of light. For example, warm colors can be added to landscape or portrait photos.

Tip: Photos taken on sunny days, especially the shadow parts, will be very blue. At this time, setting the white balance of the camera to cloudy days can increase the golden color in the photo, which is equivalent to adding a warm color filter in front of the camera.