LIGHTING TECHNIQUES IN PHOTOGRAPHY

Continuous light and natural light

The session took place on the sets of Barcelona Studios, one of the largest in the city. It was a class of Fashion Photography in studio, within the Professional Photography Course of the Seeway School. This time we wanted to work with continuous light and not with flashes, the usual light source in studio photography.

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lighting scheme I

We started working with three Kinoflo fluorescent tube screens. In a previous post I already talked about the characteristics of this light that produces a very nice soft light. As we know, the larger the illumination surface, the softer the light and the less saturated the colors. Each Diva 200 screen is made up of 4 tubes of 1 mt long, which, by having three screens, creates an illumination surface of approximately one square meter. To further decrease the contrast, I placed two large reflectors on the right.

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Kino Flo Diva 200

The second shot was a variant of the previous one. The difference is that here I placed a large palio of 3.6 x 3.6 mts. in front of the light source, thus achieving a larger illumination surface and an even greater diffusion. A very enveloping light was achieved, with almost no shadows.

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Lighting scheme II

The purpose of the third photo was to separate the figure from the background and work the main and background light with autonomy. The main light, the one that gives character to the photo and illuminates the model’s face, was placed frontal, somewhat oblique. In this case, the Kinoflo screen used was 8 tubes which produced a very soft light. The background was evenly illuminated with two 4-tube screens.

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Lighting scheme III

The following image is a variation of the previous one. The main light was placed sideways to give more volume to the portrait and a roll of blue gelatin was placed behind the model to achieve the dominant bluish background. Clothes, eyes and background were then tuned.

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Lighting scheme IV

One of the light modifiers that most closely resembles sunlight on a clear day is the Fresnel lens. In another post I already spoke in depth about its characteristics, the main one being the fact that it generates pronounced shadows, a vigorous, clean and well-defined clipping effect.

The transition from the luminous part to the dark part is very abrupt and dry and the luminous intensity is maintained for some distance because the luminous rays are more parallel. There is no penumbra, i.e., transition between areas in light and those in shadow.

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Lighting diagram V

I used a 1.2 K Arri projector placed laterally. As the set was mounted close to a white wall, the bounce of the light off it reduced the contrast in shadows somewhat. The background was left with a slight lateral degradation produced by the bounce of light from an 8-tube Kinoflo on the same wall.

The final picture

Just as we were finishing the class, some very intense rays of sunlight came through the window of the makeup room. The contrast was great despite the sunlight bouncing off the white walls. In this case I decreased the contrast with a Kinoflo 4-tube screen. As the color temperature of these tubes is 5500 ºK, equal to that of the Sun, I had no problems with color dominants.

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Lighting diagram VI

Main lighting scheme

lighting scheme I

Alternative lighting scheme

Lighting scheme II

Lighting scheme for short shot

Lighting scheme III

Lighting scheme with gelatines

Lighting scheme IV

Lighting scheme with Arri

Lighting diagram V

Lighting scheme with sun and LEDs

Lighting diagram VI

Luz-contínua-y-natural.pdf

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