New Tutorial: Building up the light

Garry Edwards

Garry Edwards

Moderator
Messages
13,475
Name
Garry Edwards
Edit My Images
No
This tutorial shows how and why one light is added at a time, and shows my thinking on this basic subject, which is basically that the first light is the key light, which does most of the work, and that any other lights simply provide solutions to issues either created by the key light or not covered by the key light.

In this tutorial, we photographed a Suzuki Bandit motorbike, which belongs to one of our people, and there's a video showing the whole process too.

Nearly all shots need a degree of post production work (and a second hand motorbike, which is less than pristine) certainly does, so we have also produced a video showing how the PP was done.
https://www.lencarta.com/studio-lighting-blog/04/tutorial-building-up-the-light/#.VyC_pnqGN-s
 
Nice. I can't recall having seen a good article on building the lighting.

I'm a bit confused as to why the first light is the "key" light... I would have considered the second the main/key light. I can see that the first is creating the brightest/strongest light, but I still would probably have started with the second as "key." Especially given your explanation that the key light is doing most of the work.
It also seems to me that starting with the highlights is a bit risky because every bit of light that gets added to them will push them that much farther. I've always considered it as starting from the darkest and building up/layering until you get the brightest parts you want. But I don't guess it makes much difference in practice... it's all a balancing act regardless of which side you start on.
 
sk66 said:
Nice. I can't recall having seen a good article on building the lighting.

I'm a bit confused as to why the first light is the "key" light... I would have considered the second the main/key light. I can see that the first is creating the brightest/strongest light, but I still would probably have started with the second as "key." Especially given your explanation that the key light is doing most of the work.
It also seems to me that starting with the highlights is a bit risky because every bit of light that gets added to them will push them that much farther. I've always considered it as starting from the darkest and building up/layering until you get the brightest parts you want. But I don't guess it makes much difference in practice... it's all a balancing act regardless of which side you start on.
Click to expand...
I tend to think that the key light is the light that has the greatest single effect - the light that must be created first so that we can then see what other lights, if any, are needed. The key light is the one that is indispensable, which the overhead light is.
But you're right that the softbox light front left was also essential, so perhaps with this particular subject there may be a question mark over which of those two is the key light. What really matters here is that none of the lights (to any significant degree) added to any light that was provided by any other light, they were all specific to the area/angle they were lighting. This isn't always the case, for example in a portrait the key light may be directly in front of where the subject is looking and the fill light may be on axis to the camera and the fill light will add light to some areas that are lit by the key light.
beyond the blue said:
Thoroughly enjoyed watching that. I must admit that I was surprised by the amount of PP work done. Would like to see more of these build up type of tutorials.
Click to expand...
Think of the PP more as what can be done, rather than what needs to be done. Also, if this had been a product shot then things like keyholes and bolts would not have been cloned out.
 
Really enjoyed the structure and details of this tutorial, thank you Gary and friend, a lovely demo.

I feel we are really being treated to some excellent lighting tutorials on this site at the moment. I rarely have found much in the way of more imaginative and bigger shoots as demos/training - you and Michael Sewell are doing such helpful stuff. Its so nice to get away from repeats of standard portrait work and into lighting big spaces and more interesting and challenging subjects. The nearest I have seen for lighting / technical demos is the work Jared Platt did for the Profoto youtube videos, particularly where he lit an entire hall atmospherically for a shoot.

I look forward to further tutorials in the Light and studio section. Thanks again for all your work.
 
Last edited:
Thank you for both of the tutorials - enjoyed both of them immensely. :)

They must have taken ages to compile as you cut out all the preparation time, moving lights, experimenting with power levels etc etc - Your hard work is much appreciated(y).
 
lostsoulal2 said:
Thank you for both of the tutorials - enjoyed both of them immensely. :)

They must have taken ages to compile as you cut out all the preparation time, moving lights, experimenting with power levels etc etc - Your hard work is much appreciated(y).
Click to expand...
As always, the biggest amount of time is in the editing. Second to that was cleaning the bike up as far as possible - cars are easy by comparison. But, at the same time, we shot another video anyway, which isn't bad - 1 bike clean = 2 videos:)
Shooting the video didn't take long at all, maybe half an hour, it's easy with the right amount of space and the right equipment, and as I've done it before (once or twice) there isn't much experimentation.

What we're trying to do here is to produce a series of videos that should really be called "Back to Basics" but which isn't because that would offend people. There are just so many "how to" videos out there which I can see at a glance to be totally fake, they seem to be produced either to sell dodgy products or to sell training courses, and like a series of adverts from a well known manufacturer where we know that all of the "lighting" was actually produced on a graphics tablet, these videos seem to be produced to deceive people.

We're trying to sell products too of course, but we feel that the best way of doing that is to show people how to use them, and so we generally don't even mention the actual products.
And the other reason why we do it is because we can - there are more and more recent businesses trying to enter the lighting arena, but none of them have a clue about lighting and none of them can produce training videos.

Right now, I'm at the end of my working life and I don't fear competition (not that I ever did) and I'm perfectly happy to help to pass on a bit of knowledge to the next generation.
 
mike weeks said:
My understanding always has been that the key is the brightest light regardless of what it is illuminating.

Mike
Click to expand...
The key light is the main source of light in an image; it's the light that defines the overall look/feel... would you call a bright rim light the key? And how do you define "brightest?" Is it the light that actually has the brightest setting, or is it the area of the subject that is brightest (i.e. 2-3 lights layered)? If it's the brightest area of the subject which is caused by layering the lights, which light is the key?
I can see why Garry called the first light the key... it was essential to the look/feel of the final image. But, IMO it wasn't the main light in the image... the second light was and it was also essential to the final look of the image. IMO, the first light was a rim light intended to provide specular highlights and "cut the subject out;" and more typically that light is added later (particularly in situations with less control).

Typically, the key light *is* the brightest (i.e. 3 point key/fill/back lighting), but it doesn't have to be.

FWIW, in product photography the "first light" is often an overhead light, and often angled forward. But is also typically proportionally large enough and forward enough that it is also lighting the front to a significant degree (in relation to the need). In that case I would also call it the key light.

I realize this may seem pedantic, but I feel like the lack of common understanding/terminology causes a lot of confusion. And most of these things really are not arbitrary/undefined (but they can be *somewhat* subjective).
 
Steven,
Let's not be pendantic:)
I don't want to be pedantic but if I did, I could argue that the second light cannot be the key light because it is basically just an off-axis fill light.
The way that we shot that video was to use the same additive method that I would use for any normal shot.
In my far from humble opinion it would have been better to show every light individually, with all others switched off, but that would have made the video much longer, and I'm constantly being told to speed things up,
If I had showed each light individually then the second light would have ended up as the fourth light, just filling in bits that weren't covered by the 2nd and 3rd lights (honeycombed lights fitted to standard reflectors) and the pedantic me says that a fill light that just does a Heineken doesn't qualify as a key light.

At the end of the day though, those of us who have had formal training and/or higher education in this subject are at risk of forgetting that photography isn't a real science at all, and that jargon/terminology can therefore sometimes be a bit woolly. Also, even when terminology does have a known meaning, people confuse themselves over it and mis-use it to the point that the language evolves and meanings change. For example, "high key" and "low key" seems to mean "white background" and "black background" to many people, even though the actual meaning is very different. And then there's HSS and Tail end sync, with many people calling both HSS...
 
Last edited:
i said the key light was the brightest light, it is the key to your metering and as Garry says anything else is just fill. Rim lighting although it appears bright is coming from the rear so always looks brighter than frontal lighting - the lighting style favoured by Joel Grimes might make this interesting

Mike
 
mike weeks said:
i said the key light was the brightest light, it is the key to your metering and as Garry says anything else is just fill. Rim lighting although it appears bright is coming from the rear so always looks brighter than frontal lighting - the lighting style favoured by Joel Grimes might make this interesting

Mike
Click to expand...
Hatchet Lighting?
That is an interesting one, I don't think I would call either side light "key" but yet both are equally indispensable to the image.

I like the association that the key light is the "key" to your metering... and it often is.
Conversely, the metering can be based on the lowest exposure you want... and it often is (i.e. kill all ambient and then build up the lights).
 
Garry Edwards said:
At the end of the day though, those of us who have had formal training and/or higher education in this subject are at risk of forgetting that photography isn't a real science at all, and that jargon/terminology can therefore sometimes be a bit woolly. Also, even when terminology does have a known meaning, people confuse themselves over it and mis-use it to the point that the language evolves and meanings change. For example, "high key" and "low key" seems to mean "white background" and "black background" to many people, even though the actual meaning is very different. And then there's HSS and Tail end sync, with many people calling both HSS...
Click to expand...
I suffer from being overly technical and under talented...

High key/Low key... we now seem to have two different references/meanings; lighting and images.
 
simonbarker said:
What made you choose that composition for the bike?
Click to expand...
It wasn't at the forefront of my mind, I just chose a compositon and camera position that allowed me to demonstrate the lighting, which is what the tutorial is about.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top