Five professional photography lighting skills and lighting schematic diagram

1. Entry lighting tools: natural light.

Natural light is the most basic and commonly used light source for photographers. It is sometimes bright and strong, and sometimes dim and soft; Sometimes the hue is warm, sometimes it is cold; Sometimes direct light can produce a long shadow, and sometimes it is diffused by clouds, leaving no shadow. As the sun rises and sets, natural light can be used as main light, side light, backlight and side light. Natural light looks natural and always free.

CheyenneEllis is a professional photographer from Los Angeles, specializing in taking portraits of celebrities and advertising works. The photo above is one of her series of works for the famous actress halle berry. When shooting this portrait, he only used natural light and reflectors. This series of works has been published in USWeekly, Harper'sBazaar and Shape. You might think that in such a high-profile shooting project, photographer Ellis will not only shoot with a $47 camera and a reflector.

Cheyenne Ellis is a professional photographer from Los Angeles who specializes in portraits and advertisements of celebrities.

Photography: Cheyenne Ellis Model: halle berry

Oahu Beach, Hawaii

Equipment: camera: Canon 5D Mark II

Lens: 24 24- 70mm f/2.8 Canon lens.

However, natural light and reflectors are photographer Ellis' favorite combination. The works displayed on her personal website are full of natural light. "I like the simplicity and flexibility of the mirror and the style it brings," she said. "I rarely put the reflector directly at the person being photographed because the light is too strong. On the contrary, I will feather the light to ensure that there is a beautiful reflection in the photographer's eyes. The beach in this photo is like a huge fill light board, which helps a lot. "

She sat down and put the mirror on her lap.

CheyenneEllis designed a clever way to use a 20-inch silver/white mirror without an assistant: she sat down, put the mirror on her lap, and adjusted the direction of the mirror with her forearm when shooting.

2. The fusion of sunlight and flash.

Dyad Photography is a photography studio located in Brooklyn, new york. Founded by photographers Justin and ColleenPicciotti, it mainly shoots commercial and artistic works. The two have filmed a private project with the theme of food, and they have taken this project from a symbolic image to an amazing direction. At first glance, these works are "dynamic food" shot by freeze-frame technology, unlike traditional display pictures. But look closely, and you will suddenly realize. The works you see are shocking and hilarious. But none of these works about food emphasizes the three-dimensional nature of objects, and other photographers try to highlight this in their own works.

These works are real, even anti-traditional two-dimensional images. How did photographer Piciottis shoot it? Like most studio works, lighting plays a vital role. The tables, chairs, floors and tableware under the spaghetti and meatballs in the above works are actually printed photos, not real objects. In order to deceive the vision and make the scene look like a photo taken at one time, the color temperature and density must be the same in the light of "room facilities" and spaghetti. This is not easy, because the light on the desktop comes from the window, while the light on the pasta comes from the flash.

However, the exhaustion of the works also makes the audience notice that these are not ordinary business pictures. For example, photographer Picciottis deliberately let the light shine on the noodles from the opposite direction to the desktop. He explained: "We can highlight the control of the viewing angle by choosing a combination of light sources in different directions."

In order to highlight the spaghetti in the cold background, the photographer chose light that is slightly warmer than the background light.

Photographers spend hours shooting and printing desktop photos. They use white/silver reflectors and black cloth to keep the brightness of the desktop, chair and floor consistent. When shooting, they hung the Hasselblad 50 1 camera on the digital back of Aptus75 above the table, using a 50mmf/4 Carl Zeiss lens.

The desktop photos taken are printed with Epson Stylus PhotoR2400 printer. Photographer Piciottis chose matt paper to avoid the reflection of photographic paper during the second shooting.

Desktop photo

After the spaghetti was laid, the photographer lit up the whole scene with a flashlight with a radome. This kind of light is wide and soft, which can simulate the light entering the window. "One trick of using light when shooting food is to use a more directional light source, which can shoot different textures of each element," said Piciottis. "The radome allows us to soften the light without weakening the shadow. We also placed white and gray light compensation plates around the pasta to further strengthen the shadow and highlight the direction of the light."

The use of radome also enhances the sense of space of Italian cheese crumbs in the picture, which is the most dramatic sign that this work is different from traditional food photography. Another advantage of using radome is that reducing the angle of radome can avoid the reflection of photographic paper.

The lighting method of this simulated freeze-frame photography work is that Picciottis uses the natural light of the window as the desktop lighting, and uses the studio lamp of baofutu Acute22400WS (US$ 3,245) and the white radome of Gabofutu (US$ 352) to illuminate the spaghetti. PocketWizard wireless trigger ($3,565,438+0) is used for synchronous flashing of studio lights. White and gray filler plates help to increase the density of shadows, strengthen shadows and highlight the direction of light.

3. The professional location photographer moved the studio to the outdoor.

Running out of location shooting may be one of the most serious challenges for photographers. Photographers must carry lamps, bring or look for power, and also need to combine ambient light and artificial light seamlessly.

For the above reasons, new york photographer LauraBarisonzi was initially only allowed to take this portrait of a bodybuilding model with spare natural light and reflectors. The professional sports and life photographer said, "It's much easier than setting lights and carrying power."

But the clouds are rolling in the sky, and the ambient light alternates between direct sunlight and scattering.

The lighting strategy used by the photographer is to use the lights of two studios to suppress the sunlight, so that she doesn't have to care whether the sunlight is directly on the model.

The trick to running out of light for location shooting is to ensure enough electricity.

"For me, the trick to running out of light when shooting on location is to make sure there is enough electricity," she said. She doesn't like to use batteries because the charging time between flashes is too long. "If I use battery power, I will rush to finish shooting, because I am always worried that the battery is not enough, so I usually use a generator to power the flash."

In order to keep the venue clean, she also likes to use PocketWizard wireless trigger. The light simulating sunlight must be high in position, hard in texture and high in brightness, and the light should shine downward at an angle of about 45 degrees. When the lamp holder is too high, it is easy to be blown down by the wind. Therefore, whenever there is wind, Barisonzi will use sandbags to increase the weight of the lamp holder, and will also let the assistant hold the higher lamp holder on the left side of the lamp holder.

Laura Barisonzi used two AlienBeesB 1600 studio lights (360 dollars each), 1 GS 1 beehive, and a Honda EU3200i generator to provide power. The camera used by the photographer is Nikon D3, 24-70mmf/2.8 lens.

4, shooting jewelry, glory is everything.

Lighting is the most difficult when shooting reflective objects, and shooting jewelry is the most time-consuming. The biggest challenge is to make inanimate objects full of jumping light and brilliant life.

Photographers David Barowsky and Steven Devris face this challenge every day. They are members of the "Ant Farm Photography" studio in new york Photography Zone.

"We pay attention to every aspect of jewelry, especially diamonds, because they are expensive," Barowsky said. The Faraone Mennella 18K gold bracelet in the photo is inlaid with very good quality white diamonds, brown diamonds and champagne diamonds.

"This photo, the effect is all made of light, and there is almost no post-editing. Of course, we also need a high-definition macro lens to capture the subtle changes in the cutting surface and color of diamonds. "

Be sure to write it down when you shoot jewelry.

When shooting jewelry, you must adjust the light in the Yi Deng, and also adjust the light on the cutting surface and surface of jewelry. Some jewels need to use more than 10 lights and reflectors at the same time when shooting. "You have to constantly adjust the light on the surface until it is adjusted," Barowsky explained. "The lighting should be compact, and don't let the ambient light leak in to affect the color temperature."

The reflected light from the background may cause a black dead zone in the picture. In order to avoid this situation, lights, soft masks and reflectors should be around the subject.

This photo was taken with two 3200-watt brown Unilite studio lamps. One is placed on the left and right sides of the bracelet, the plexiglass plate is placed in front of the lamp, and the bracelet is placed on the reflector coated with 925 silver paint. Because the lamp holder is equipped with a grid, the light passes through plexiglass and then attenuates, so that a subtle tone level can be created on gold.

The brown Picolite flash lamp installed near the airplane seat can emit concentrated light, which can increase the luster and flash of diamonds. At the same time, the light box arranged behind the bracelet can not only ensure the purity of the background, but also reflect light on the silver reflector.

Accurate exposure control is also very important. For this reason, photographers rely on exposure histograms. Many photographers use histograms to preserve the details of highlights or shadows in photos, while photographers who shoot jewelry use histograms to monitor the glare of jewelry to ensure that the flashing parts are not overexposed. "Controlling glare is one of the main challenges when shooting bright and dazzling jewelry," Barowsky said.

"One trick to reduce glare is to gradually increase the histogram reading of background light to 255. If it exceeds 255, unnecessary glare will appear. "

The team of Antfarm Photography Studio used 65,438 +0 brown Picolite studio lamp (US$ 720) and two brown Unilite 3200WS lamp holders (US$ 65,438+US$ 0,565,438+00 each), which were powered by Brown grafit power supply. Photographers use Xena P24×5 camera, Xena 54h digital back, Schneider 120mm f/5.6 macro lens, and the shooting aperture is f/32.

? 5. Keep it dark under the light.

The effective use of lighting is an important link in advertising photography. The above picture shows the brochure of Honda CRVminivan and Hybrid SUV 2065 438+00. JeffLudes, a car photographer from Los Angeles, and three assistants spent four hours taking this photo.

The main light when shooting is Arri tungsten lamp, and the photographer did not use the Fresnel lens commonly used in film shooting. "The reason we didn't use Fresnel lens is that we want the light to fill the whole photo, just like the light of a street lamp," Rudes said.

In fact, the existing lights in the scene are also an important part of the whole lighting. The background lights added later are equipped with acetate filters for color correction to ensure that the color temperature of the output lights is consistent with that of street lamps.

The ultimate goal of the photographer is to add color and atmosphere and give the car a perceptual color-optimism, youth and urban sense. But it is also very important to outline the appearance of the car through lighting, to show the shape, line, color and size of the car. In order to highlight the subject, the photographer chose brighter light than the warm background to make the blue subject stand out.

Considering the blue sky and the reflection of the window, the photographer chose to take this photo at dusk. "The difficulty in using light at dusk is that the light should be ready at dawn, and the position and brightness level of the light cannot be determined at this time," Rudes said. "When the sun is about to set, you must quickly and accurately adjust the final position of the light and shoot in a short time window with perfect balance between sunlight and light."

If Rudes uses a 2000-watt lamp to illuminate the whole scene, it may eventually produce a black shadow in the area that is not illuminated by the lamp, which will destroy the photographer's idea of shooting a street scene full of vitality and light. Rudes said, "We often use 150 watt low-power lamps."

He explained: "People generally don't notice that when light is used in dim scenes, small and dark lights are usually more suitable than big and bright lights, and too bright lights will only cause dark shadows."

Shooting details

Other shooting details? Water tankers soaked the whole street, making those dark and featureless black roads full of vitality and luster. The team of photographers even "built" sidewalks in the foreground, covering up the fact that the vehicle actually stopped in the middle of the road (the vehicle being photographed actually stopped in front of a driveway).

The final photo consists of eight different photos, each of which is composed, illuminated and selected for a specific element. For example, the side, back and tires of a car are exposed separately. "If the light on the fender is right, the wheel hub groove will have a deep shadow, so it is necessary to expose the tire separately," Rudes said.

A work was born!

Photographer JeffLudes used four 1000W, four 650W, 1 2000W and 1 350W Arri tungsten lamps to take this photo. Unlike the warm light in Arri's tungsten lamp, the light shining on the car is provided by the 8-foot-high Kinoflo daylight fluorescent lamp. The cameras used for shooting are Alpa Max medium format camera, Freescale p65+ digital back and round APO Sironar 35mmf/4.5 HR lens.