Light Modification

March 26, 2010UncategorizedBy Mike

Thank you for visiting our new site and welcome to our new blog! It is my hope that this blog will serve as a resource for aspiring photographers who are endeavoring to enter the field in a professional capacity or simply wanting to learn how to take better photos for their own purposes.

In this post I want to talk briefly about light modification, which I covered during my Olivet Studio photography class this afternoon. (Special thanks to my students for allowing class to be photographed today.)

Today, class was held here at the Image Group studio. It’s cool to have the studio only a half a mile from the University, because it serves as a superb resource for me as a professor. It’s my home away from home, and makes for an ideal second setting for my Studio Photography classes.

Light modification is the process of utilizing various light modifiers to adapt light to the specific look for your subject. A light modifier is basically something that is put in front of or around your light source. It can be as simple as diffusion fabric or as complex as a beauty light.

There are functionally three main things you need to know about light modifiers.

Size matters. In our case today we looked at light from seven feet in diameter to seven inches in diameter. The larger the light source, the softer the look of the photo. (By “softer” we mean flattering.)
Price matters. For photographers on a budget, sail cloth material makes a terrific soft box. Our soft boxes (Chimera) provide beautiful, portable, and efficient light.
Grid spots (fabric or metal) allow light to be sculpted. They help produce highly directional textured light this gives a dramatic quality by limiting the direction and spread of the light.

The students got to shoot with smaller soft boxes, soft fabric grids, and conventional grid spots. They learned that the light falloff is most effectively controlled with a fabric grid, close to the subject. As with most light, closer is better and you can really see these results in studio portraiture. We are using Speedoton lighting equipment and our background came from J & J Backgrounds.