Today on The Laws of Light it's time to combine three objects together and light and separate them,
all at the same time.
MUSIC
Hi, this is Jay P. Morgan.
Welcome to our fourth in The Laws of Light series, photographing a ball, cube, and a
cylinder.
We're gonna add three of them together to help us to understand how to do all of those
objects at one time.
There isn't anything you can photograph that doesn't have one, two, or three of these subject
matters in every single photograph.
So let's take a quick look at all of the things we've learned about camera angle, about quality
of light, about dimension, about separation using three object.
First off, when we placed these objects on the table, what did we do?
Well we've got a highlight side and we've got a shadow side.
So I placed the square so that the highlight side of the square gives me relief on the
shadow side of my sphere.
I place my cylinder so the shadow side of the cube will give relief to the highlight
side and separation to the cylinder.
And then on the camera right side we added a light on the background that gives us separation
for the shadow side of our cylinder.
So each of these are giving separation and dimension to the one next to it.
Our light coming in from camera left gives us wonderful drawing for the subject matter.
The only thing I might do to make this just a little bit better is I would lower this
light just a tiny bit.
And what happens when I do that?
Two things happen.
The highlight on top of the cube got a little darker, the shadow did crawl up on the side
of the cube just a little bit.
It's ok to have cast shadows, they create dimension.
If that really bothers me, I can take my sphere and move it a little bit forward, I can take
my cube and move him just a bit back, and I now still have that same dimension going
on from highlight to shadow, from highlight to shadow, from highlight to shadow.
And I can get rid of that cast shadow.
But sometimes the cast shadow allows me to think, "Oh, they're in relationship to each
other."
I'm okay moving my cube in and having a little bit of that shadow because I like the cast
shadows.
I think it gives us a nice dimension with one another.
When we have these three together and we have the highlight to shadow, highlight shadow,
highlight shadow, we now can take little pieces of tin foil, little pieces of white sliver
card, and we can put them in these areas here where it's dead to camera, where you can't
see them, and those cards will reflect light back into the side of our sphere.
They'll reflect some interesting light back into the side of our cube.
You can put some small fill lights, and they don't have to be a big source, they can be
small sources.
Little pieces of silver and they create some interesting highlights back in there.
So you can start to fill inside the image.
That's an important principle to understand when you're doing product photography.
This is a broad source fill to open up everything on set.
But when you're doing product photography, you're going to want to use small mirrors,
and small little pieces of reflective material to come in to start opening up different areas.
And it makes it more interesting and not just broadly over lit and filled.
So it becomes an interesting way to fill some of the shadows.
Now again, we're looking at this with a very directional point source light.
The same thing is going to happen for us when we go to a softer diffused source.
In this diffused light the transitions are a lot softer, a lot smoother.
You see the highlight transition in the shadow.
Our highlight back here's not as bright.
Our shadows, because they're casting onto our cube are not as harsh.
You see everything is just a little softer.
It's still a beautiful kind of separation and a nice dimension in our subject matter.
It's a very pretty light.
I'd probably bring the exposure up just a little bit on this to make it look right.
Maybe the background down just a tiny bit.
But it's gonna give us that right dimension, and that separation.
Now it's interesting if we take this light and we go into a top back, or an overhead,
light, interesting things are trying to happen here.
We have light now coming from top to bottom.
So our highlight into shadow.
Highlight this is brighter, darker, darkest.
Darker, nice highlight on the side into a shadow side here.
We've lost most of our cast shadow.
There's a little bit but not very much.
So we get rid of a lot of those cast shadows when we go overhead.
It's a pretty light, a different direction of light.
But it allows these things to maybe be a little closer to one another, and to be able to maybe
live in a little bit closer context to each other.
Just a different way of looking at the light.
So if I take this light around from behind, if I drop it directly behind, it's going to
create some really interesting things are going to happen.
We're going to get wonderful shadows that fall forward.
We're going to get nice highlights on top.
It's not gonna help our cylinder out as much as if we just bring this a little bit to the
side.
And now our cylinder is going to start to have some wrapping from right to left.
Our sphere wraps from top to bottom, our cube wraps side to side.
It gives a little bit of dimension there.
So placing this light will really depend on the height, and the size of each of these
subjects.
And whether they want to be right or left.
And in doing that it will help each of them to have the best light that represents them
and what we need to do to show their qualities.
Let's look at some images that capture combining a ball, a cube and a cylinder.
MUSIC
So there you have a look at a ball, a cube and a cylinder.
How to light them together, how to separate them from one another, how to separate them
from the background.
They become a great example of the objects and things you will face in life when you
photograph, when you light, when you do video.
This is very much a building process.
It's helping you to see that there are different objects in every image, and how to get each
of their surfaces to look correct.
So next we're going to take a look at the principles that you've just learned, and start
applying them to real objects- people and places.
So keep those cameras rollin'
and keep on clickin'.