At 16:41 4/8/02, Clendon Gibson wrote:
Question.
Are there cases where you want to produce frontal
lighting?
Probably. It depends on what you *want* that photograph to look
like. I've been stating opinion based on what I want mine to look like . .
. but have tried to include what the trade-offs are. Frontal lighting
almost always "flattens" 3-D subject material and its texture.
My wife saw a copy of the March issue of "Birds & Blooms" which included a
photo contest and bought it for me. The cover photograph was obviously
made with very direct and very nearly frontal lighting. From the
catchlights in the hummingbird's eyes, it looks as if something like a
dual-head macro flash was mounted on the end on the lens. Although the
image is exceedingly sharp with bright, saturated color, it's very "flat"
looking without much depth; both hummingbird and the flowers it's
on. Opinion: the hummingbird looks like a "deer in the headlights." It's
the "look" of direct, harsh, frontal flash use I was referring to. You can
see the cover here (and will likely have to unwrap the URL to do so 'cause
it's *very* long):
http://www.countrystorecatalog.com/productDetail.asp?SID=&REFURL=I217&txtproductId=22287&SelTab=Magazines&CatID=MAG&SubCatID=ISS&CatText=MAG0.000000H0.000000E+00GIF&SubCatText=MAG0.000000ISS0.000000H0.000000E+00GIF
How about black background?
It seems to me that for the second a defintite yes.
For instance I have a rose bush by my house. The
background to it is the garage door, which has nothing
to recomend it photogenic wise.
I would prefer to call it "low key" and not necessarily "black" although
the example you gave is extremely low key (OK, it's black). Again, it
depends on what you want for the photograph and decisions you make about
what to do with the background. Here is an example of a "low key" done as
a "grab shot" hand held without any reflector or flash. It was lit this
way by direct sun with the background shadowed completely by a low
wall. In retrospect a gobo holding a thin gauze panel might have cut down
the harshness of the direct sun. However, that would not celebrate the
petal texture (hints of this can be seen in a couple of small
places). Better yet would have been shading it from the direct sunlight
and using a panel reflector for a different lighting angle:
http://johnlind.tripod.com/oly/gallery/om97.html
Although this was done in a studio with a single strobe into an umbrella,
it represents what I would like to achieve outdoors. The diffused indirect
lighting shows a 3-D depth and much greater petal texture than the other
one and it represents what I would like to create with the outdoor work
(albeit with some low key background):
http://johnlind.tripod.com/oly/gallery/om152.html
-- John
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