Lighting workshop with Matt

 LIGHTING WORKSHOP

To begin with in our lighting workshop, he told us about the main light which is commonly used in shoots which is called the blonde right. We also learnt the red head light is also used a lot, he used Ella as the model to show different lighting techniques

- Matt first used the blonde light and red head light to give an overall light to her face, this had minimal shadows and tone.

- He then changed the angle of the blonde light and the red light to make hard shadows, this appeared harsh and he explained that using hard shadows aren't used typically as much at the moment as they are not particularly flattering on the person.

-To make the shadows less harsh and instead softer, he used a specific paper on the light to make it less intense, therefore creating less shadow.

3 POINT LIGHTING

Matt explained  that 3 point lighting is simply when the light comes used for the picture/video comes from 3 different lights. This is used a lot as it gives a 'beauty effect' and makes the model look generally airbrushed and attractive looking.

- The first light is the key light, this is what predominately lights up the models face, in our case Ella's.

- The second light is called the fill light which fills the shadow on her face.

- The third light is the back light. This separated her face from non inanimate objects which makes her look more singular. It separated her from the background.

MORE INTERESTING LIGHTING

He then admitted that these lights are very typical and not the most interesting, so he showed us how to make lighting more unique appearing

- For the first interesting lighting, we used blonde light as the back light. Then he added a large piece of polystyrene to make the backlight reflect off it, which lit up her face overall.

- He explained using a Matt box on the end of the camera stops 'dirty light' from going on the camera lens.

- We learnt lense flare is when you can see the lens of the camera in the picture, it is usually in a crescent shape and the Matt box prevents this.

- By adjusting the lighting to a higher exposure, it makes the object become more sharp, this is by the shadows it makes. However we can adjust the exposure on the camera, but by adjusting the actual light to make it less harsh it looked better overall.

- He told us the reason bathroom lights can appear so flattering is because they are diffused lights, which they can replicate if this is the wanted effect.

- After this, we used only the blonde light and a sheet to make the moody lighting.

- To change this to make only half of Ellas face lit, we used the polystyrene on one side of her to light up half her face.

-He then showed us the fluorescent lights, these are similar to LED's and are not dimmable. The ones he used were red and blue, when he put them far apart they created a very visually pleasing pinky blue colour, and when he put them together it made a white colour.

Using the polystyrene, from where I was standing it made a silhouette shape. The below photo is how it appeared on the camera.

This was taken when Matt used the backlight behind her and the polystyrene to light her face up

The photo opposite shows the use of the fluorescent lights which we used to light up her face making a pinky colour, with the blue LED used behind to make it the background colour