Shooting still life teaches you the ultimate lighting skills.

Lead: How to polish the fear of death and still life? Here I will teach you some lighting techniques for shooting still life. Interested friends learn quickly!

Shooting still life lets you know the work of Ace- Pisai, a photographer with the ultimate lighting skills.

Perhaps because of my engineering background, I may be better at rational thinking than fine arts. I have read many tutorials in recent years, whether in the late or early stage. The biggest drawback is that they only teach you how to do it, not why. A person who can only learn but not explore can only stop in the circle drawn by others. A person who only knows how to reach out and not fish for himself can only pick up wisdom and eat leftovers. According to my thinking, from observation to experiment, from thinking to practice, they tell you how to do it, and I will tell you why.

The work of photographer Ace- Pixar

The work of photographer Ace- Pixar

I will write a series of interesting tutorials recently. Of course, I also look forward to the day when these things I have photographed and thought about can be assembled into a book and published into a book to continue the spirit of thinking.

What you will see next is thinking that you have never seen before.

Now you are sitting in front of the computer. Imagine such a scene. Suddenly, the power goes out, the computer screen is dark, the curtains are tight, and the light can't penetrate. It was dark in front of my eyes. There is no difference between opening your eyes and closing them. You suddenly begin to understand that the things around you, the computer in front of you, the desk lamp on your right hand and your hand are all real and objective, and they disappear because there is no light. Light comes from a light source, shines on an object, and then reflects from the object to your eyes. Your observation angle, the angle between light and object, the intensity of light and the texture of object all determine what things look like in your eyes. Start with the light source and gradually understand the relationship.

The work of photographer Ace- Pixar

Light sources, such as light bulbs, have the following characteristics:

1, intensity: 50W is not as bright as 100W.

2. Color: The color of tungsten lamp is yellow than that of fluorescent lamps.

3. Size: tungsten lamp is smaller than fluorescent lamp.

The work of photographer Ace- Pixar

First of all, the intensity of light:

Through common sense, we know that the intensity of light has the following two characteristics:

1. The farther away the light source is from the object, the weaker it is, and the closer it is to the object, the stronger it is. Light decays rapidly in exponential form.

2. The higher the power of the light source, the stronger the light.

On this basis, through analysis, we draw the following conclusions:

1, the stronger the light, the brighter the illuminated part of the object and the more obvious the shadow.

2. When the brightness of the object is too bright, it is easy to affect the exposure. For example, normal exposure of bright parts, insufficient exposure of dark parts, normal exposure of dark parts and overexposure of bright parts affect the tolerance of the whole picture.

3. When the brightness of the object is too low, for normal exposure, the aperture sensitivity is easy to blur, and the aperture shutter is easy to produce more noise and reduce the image quality.

Second, the color of light.

Through common sense, make the following analysis:

1, the intersection of different colors of light will produce color superposition effect, such as orange light where red light and yellow light overlap, which conforms to the additive principle (Baidu Encyclopedia link is given).

2. Different colors of light will have a color superposition effect on the object itself, and the principle is the same as above.

The work of photographer Ace- Pixar

From the above analysis, we can draw the following conclusions:

1, if you want to restore the original color of the object, it is best to use white light with stable color temperature, because white light has almost all the spectrum of visible light, which can make the object reflect the real color.

2. If there are multiple light sources, it is necessary to keep the primary color of the object, and it is best to use light sources with the same color temperature (same model from the same manufacturer) to prevent color difference caused by the light sources.

3. In order to minimize the influence of ambient light, because the color temperature of ambient light is unpredictable, you can use closed equipment such as studios and light boxes, or use black cards and cardboard to block excess light.

Third, the size of light.

1, point light source:

To deeply understand the influence of light on objects, we should start with the origin of light. There are many kinds of light sources: sun, incandescent lamp, LED lamp, fluorescent lamp, etc. Can be regarded as consisting of countless point light sources. This paper introduces the concept of point light source, which has the following characteristics:

(1) point light source is infinitely small, without length, width and thickness. It is a concept that needs to be introduced in the analysis.

(2) The point light source emits light uniformly in all directions, with uniform density, covering the whole space. There is no place where there is no place.

(3) The intensity of light emitted by point light sources is the same, that is, there is no situation where it is brighter and darker.

2. Optical vector

Numerous rays emitted by a point light source are called light vectors. A vector is a directional quantity with two attributes, one is the direction and the other is the quantity. The quantity is the length of the vector representing the intensity of light. It has the following characteristics:

(1) The light vector only travels in one direction, that is, it will not turn back halfway unless something changes direction, such as a mirror.

(2) The light vector propagates along a straight line, that is, it will not be twisted, S-shaped or rotated. Although Einstein's theory of relativity puts forward that light will be distorted, its essence is that the gravitational field distorts space, and light still travels along a straight line, and its influence can be ignored.

(3) The light vector will decay rapidly in the propagation process, that is, the light intensity will gradually weaken along the direction of the light vector.

3. Simplification of light source

Because light is infinite, the analysis of it is very complicated. For a smoother analysis, it needs to be simplified here.

Simplification of (1) point light source

The divergence of the light source is three-dimensional, and it is in all directions in three-dimensional space (Figure 1). For the convenience of analysis, here we simplify it to two-dimensional propagation direction (Figure 2), and because objects are generally only on one side of the light source, desk lamps, flashlights, sunlight, etc. By illuminating in only one direction, we simplify the propagation of a point light source to a single side (Figure 3).

(2) Simplification of surface light source

Because point light sources are infinitely small, no matter how small a surface light source is, it can be regarded as infinitely many point light sources. The surface light source can be curved surface or irregular surface. For the convenience of analysis, we simplify it to a pure plane (Figure 1). As you can imagine, this pure plane is perpendicular to the screen, so its projection on the screen, that is, its expression in two dimensions, is a straight line (Figure 2), which is also in line with the simplification of the point light source mentioned above. However, the number of point light sources of such a light source is infinite, and it is still impossible to analyze. Therefore, it is simplified, and the area light source is replaced by a limited number of point light sources (Figure 3). Because the light of surface light source is uniform, the distance between point light sources is the same.