Jay: Today on the "Laws of Light," we're gonna talk about the emotion of light.
It's gonna be emotional.
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Hi, this is Jay P. Morgan.
Today on "The Slanted Lens," I've got Nadia here with me.
She is beautiful and she's gonna help us to illustrate how light can create emotion.
So, why do we create things?
Why do we do video?
Why do we do photography?
What is our purpose in creating imagery?
We, obviously, wanna communicate.
We want people to be able to understand a message through a visual medium.
But in that communication process, we want people to feel emotion.
We want to move them in some way.
In my early work, I really wanted people to feel...I wanted them to laugh when they looked
at my pictures.
That was the emotion I wanted.
I did comedy work.
I wanted people to look at my pictures and wanted them to just laugh and to have a great
experience.
As my work has progressed into more and more video, as I do a documentary, as I do a bio
piece about someone, I want you to feel a connection to them.
I want you to feel something for this person.
I want you to empathize with them.
I want you to feel sad for them.
I want you to feel happy with them.
We want to move people.
We want them to cry.
We want them to laugh.
We want them to go, "Ahh," or "Agrrh."
The worst thing an artist can get is indifference.
When people look at your work and they just don't respond.
They don't feel anything.
I mean, that's the worst response an artist can get.
Remember this, subject matter can contrast light.
A smiling baby in a very hard light is going to make a much different viewing experience
for the viewer than a limp body of a baby after birth who has not made it through that
experience in a dramatic light.
That's gonna have a much different viewing experience to the viewer.
So, the subject-matter can contrast the light that we're using and sometimes you can use
that to your advantage.
But for the most part, you're gonna want the light to support and to strengthen what you
want to communicate.
So, light becomes a critical tool that we can use to create the emotion and to set the
stage for what we want to communicate.
So, let's talk about how light communicates emotion.
In my experience, light has the power to create emotion in four different ways.
First off, let's talk about ratios or contrast.
We've talked about ratios before.
Basically, just the ability to create contrast to make it dramatic and more moody.
I think it's fascinating if you listen to the things people say that use light as a
motivator in conversation.
"He had a dark personality or she lights up a room."
I mean those kinds of things are really talking about light and how light creates an emotional
response.
So, now, if you're going to use light in order to communicate, you wanna tie into the key
element, the things people in society say and relate to.
A light, bright, open scene is not going to communicate dark and moody, sullen, lost,
and confused as much as a dark, high-contrast scene is going to.
Now, any of these rules can and will be broken all the time.
You can take and shoot a really wonderful dark portrait of a very bright, and sunny
and happy situation.
So, I'm not saying any of this is an absolute, but it certainly becomes an obstacle you have
to overcome.
Lighter images are more open, more friendly, more inviting.
We feel a comfortableness with them.
It's the kinda way we see things in life which is interesting because we see things outside
in that bright, open light.
We're used to that kind of look.
When you get inside, and in rooms, and single lights and darkness, we don't feel as comfortable
in the dark.
People are afraid of the dark.
You know, it's a place they're scared to go into.
So, we're shooting all these examples with LEDs.
We've got here the Aputure 120Ds.
And the reason we're doing that is so that you can see the example in the video and we
don't have to shoot strobes and put the images up.
You could do this just as easily with strobes.
I do it all the time.
But this just gives a way to communicate and teach.
So, first off, let's take a look at a strong, split light versus a very open, soft light.
So, strong, split light.
Now if she smiles and looks at the camera.
Just a nice smile there.
Even though she's in that very hard contrast, that hard ratio, she still has a nice smile,
but it's a very hard, deep ratio.
Now, just look kinda sad and distant.
Now if you look a little bit evil.
So, we've now brought our key light in and up into a butterfly position and we've pretty
much lit her entire face, it's a lot more open and a lot more flat.
I mean, it's not necessarily flat, we've got a nice shadow on her nose because nice split
light fly under her chin.
I'm gonna even further kind of open this up by sliding this in and getting that right
in underneath her.
And now we should have just a nice...it's a very, very flat image.
It's not an unflattering image, it's a pretty image on her face, but it gives us a much
different experience, viewing experience emotionally than that split light did.
Now, if she does the very same things here if she smiles towards the camera.
Now, if she acts depressed...or if she acts kinda evil.
Give it a little evil look.
Can you raise an eyebrow?
Nadia: Yes, I can.
Jay: There you go.
Those emotions, those three expressions on her face have a different feeling in this
context than they did in the dark, split light because you're looking at an open light.
She looks very beautiful in this light, and so you have that as kind of the main thing
you're communicating and it becomes very difficult to communicate evil or "I'm mischievous,"
or "I'm feeling depressed or lost."
Number two is quality of light.
How quickly it transitions from highlight to shadow helps you to understand the quality.
If there's a short transition from highlight to shadow, then it's a very hard, harsh quality
of light.
But if there's a soft transition from highlight to shadow, then it's a much softer light and
that communicates a softer tone, a softer experience.
Harder light, harder experience.
Now you might say, "How's that different from ratios?"
You can have a one to four ratio in a hard light.
You can also have a one to four ratio in a soft light.
So, let's take a look at that, how a one to four ratio in hard light versus one to four
ratio in soft light.
So, I put this in the one to four ratio.
She looks into that light.
That's a very hard contrast on her face, a very hard light.
So this is what I call a back Rembrandt.
She's in a Rembrandt.
If you turn your head towards the light, you'll see the little triangle that comes under her
face, but most of that Rembrandt is hidden from us because it's away from the camera.
But anyway, now I'm gonna put this into a back Rembrandt with a softer transition of
light.
So, you can see when you have a hard light that has a quick transition, it's almost an
immediate transition from highlight to shadow.
That in that you create a...something that is much more dark and kind of moody.
Whereas when we had the softer light, we still have a one to four ratio.
I'm still getting...I'm still getting an F4.
I'm still getting a four stop ratio on this.
Now we're getting a little bit of pollution from this softbox onto the background, which
is causing her to separate more, but if we got rid of that completely, we would see that
dark, deep fall off light on the back of her hair.
But the light transitions around her face, we don't see that harsh triangle on her face.
We see an openness in her cheeks, so you get this really soft transition to the darker
spot at the back of her hair.
So, we're going to the same value at the back of her hair, but it's a much softer transition
around and in that, it's a much more beautiful light.
So, even though they're both a very strong light and a high ratio, we're still getting
a much different look from hard, harsh and direct to soft, more inviting, and more open.
Next is the color of light.
The color of light communicates emotion, absolutely.
Just like we talked about when we say things about light, like having a dark personality,
people use color in reference to people all the time.
"She had a warm personality.
He was cold and distant.
She's all red.
He was blue today."
So even Taylor Swift has a song about this called "Red."
All about color and emotions.
Who is Taylor Swift anyway?
Anyway, let's go on.
So, let's use that color to our advantage when we light to be able to communicate the
emotion that we want people to feel in the image that we're shooting.
I remember being on set one day when we were the paratroopers shot.
We had the paratroopers in the foreground.
We got smoke going in the background and then we just introduced a little bit of blue in
the background.
And when Lars looked at on the screen, he goes, "That looks terrifying."
Like, you're sitting on this airplane, you're about to jump out into who knows what.
Our lights in the house are warm.
We like that warmth because it gives us a sense of coziness.
It gives us a sense of comfort, of feeling accepted and taken care of.
So, let's take a look at warmth on someone's face and cold on someone's face and just see
how that communicates and what that says to the viewer.
So, we're gonna do this shot with two different gels.
We're gonna do a CTO...a full CTO, and a full CTB.
We'll leave the color balance on daylight, so we're not trying to color correct this
here.
So, let's do a couple of shots of each of those.
We'll just see how this feels.
We'll take a look at a couple different expressions on her face and see how they communicate emotion
and just see how we can fight against the color and what we're seeing in the shot.
Number four is direction of light.
We're used to light that comes from above.
The sun comes from above.
Lights in the house come from above.
Everywhere we go, light comes from above.
And that looks comfortable and natural to us.
When you get a light that comes below that, it becomes very unnatural, it becomes very
unsettling.
So, when I put the light below Nadia, automatically she went into this "hahaha" kind of mode because
that's just what we expect.
It's just kinda that horror light from underneath.
So, let's take a quick look at light high and low as we wrap up on the emotion of light.
So, when we get the light completely overhead, that starts to create ratios and feels a little
unsettling as well because it starts to fall into the shadows on the face.
It can look very interesting and have a very evil kind of look from above as well as you
can from below.
So, push the scene behind her, Christian.
Just rotate the box around.
Maybe rotate it here.
Yeah, like that.
There you go.
Right about in there.
Just see how we have these deep shadows on her face.
We're not lighting her face.
It's not open very much anymore.
So it starts to veil her a little bit.
It's gonna feel very evil.
It's gonna feel very distant.
So, if you see, if we take this light and we go from high and we go to really low, really
low.
There we go.
We get this.
Everyone knows this is kinda horror lighting because of the old Bela Lugosi movies.
This is they way they would light him with this under light.
You know with the big shadows falling up on the back and it's just not a way we're used
to seeing light and so, it gives us this kind of creepy feeling.
So, let's take a few shots of Nadia like that.
It's gonna be hard to make her feel very inviting in that light.
Okay.
Here we go.
Looking right here.
Nice smile.
So, there you have it.
We're looking at how light helps to create emotion.
We're really looking at the ratios, quality, color, and direction.
Those four things really come together to create an emotional experience.
We've looked at her in different kind of from sad, to depressed, to happy in each one of
those.
So, the idea is to come up with a message that is consistent with your viewer.
If you want this to be a strong, happy statement, then you'll choose color, direction, ratios,
and the things that will...and quality that will communicate that message.
So, you're not trying to fight against the message, you're trying to communicate by making
decisions that are not consistent.
Now there are times, like I say, with all of these things where you'll break these rules
and you'll use colors to help to emphasize something even though it's inconsistent with
the message and the direction and the feeling and the emotion the person is giving you.
And that's okay.
All these rules are meant to be broken, but at least know what they are so you're making
strong decisions and as you go forward, you can have a consistent message in that experience.
You control the message.
The reality is, when you take all of these different principles and mix them up, you
have thousands of options which gives you the ability to create things that no one else
has ever seen.
Now, I'm sure when it comes to emotion and the way we control emotion with light, there's
things I've forgotten.
But this is the way I see light and this is how I work.
So keep those cameras rolling.
Keep on clicking.
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Nadia: I see your future subscribing to theslantedlens.com and wonderful things will happen to you.