What are the requirements for children's photography in using light?

Indoor lighting is generally divided into main light, supplementary light, background light and luminescence. If you can use these kinds of light flexibly, it will appear that the children being photographed are particularly vivid and artistic.

1, main light. The main light is the first choice to determine the lighting mode of the subject, and other lights can only play an auxiliary role. The main light used in modern studios is usually emitted by soft light boxes. The reason why the soft box is used is that the light it emits is more uniform and easy to control. The so-called soft light box is actually to put one or several light bulbs in a box and illuminate the subject through a soft box cover (usually made of plastic or textile) that can scatter light. The bigger the box, the more light bulbs, the stronger the power and the wider the lighting range. For the general photo studio, a soft light box with a diameter of about one square meter can be competent. The distance and angle of illumination can be adjusted as needed, and the exposure is determined according to the main light.

2, fill the light. Fill light is also called auxiliary light. As the name implies, its function is to supplement the light of the shadow and make it shallow. In fact, the auxiliary light can be the same soft box as the main light, and its light ratio with the main light can be adjusted by lighting distance or output power. If the exposure of the supplementary light is 3 steps less than that of the main light, the light ratio is 1: 3, which means that the result will get a deeper shadow. If the intensity of the supplementary light is close to the main light, for example, the difference is half an aperture, then the shadow part becomes very shallow. For simplicity, the light source can be fixed on the ceiling or wall, and the depth of the shadow can be controlled only by adjusting the output power. As for how to get the best light ratio between the supplementary light and the main light, we can only rely on repeated experiments.

3. Background light. In most cases, the subject has a certain distance from the background. Because the illumination of the light source decreases obviously with the increase of distance, the background is farther away from the light source than the main body, so the brightness of the background is much darker than the main body. If exposed according to the lighting conditions of the subject, the background will appear darker, and as a result, the subject looks as if it is integrated into the dark background. If the photographer doesn't mind this background effect, of course, no background light is needed. But if we want to distinguish the subject from the background, we need to illuminate the background separately, so there is the so-called background light. However, the use of background light should take into account the color, distance and illumination angle of the background. If you can't do it well, you will be self-defeating. Therefore, it is necessary to adjust the background light repeatedly to use it normally. In order to illuminate the seamless background evenly, it is sometimes necessary to use two lamps.

4. The head glows. Due to the development of portrait photography technology, the so-called head light has gradually evolved from an unnatural beam of light projected on the head to one or more wider and softer beams, which can not only prevent the hair from turning black, but also outline the subject, so it is also called "separated light". This method of using light has been widely used now, and small soft light boxes or strip lights are used for this purpose. This kind of head lighting can also be realized by reflecting a beam of light from the ceiling, but the light distribution range should be controlled. It won't look good if it shines on your nose.