The Art of Light
Introduction to Lighting
 Natural Lighting pictorial lighting
 Hard light and soft light
 Basic light sources
Naturalism and Pictorialism
 Naturalism : Follow the logical position of
light sources in a scene. This is often
referred to as motivated lighting.
 Pictorialism: allow the use of light angles
that violated this logic, if they achieve a
more pleasing picture as a result.
Naturalism
Pictorialism
To Achieve the “Look”
Motivated Lighting: justify the logical light source
To Achieve the “Look”
Lighting Planes: to give the perception of depth
Direction of Light
The direction from which the light comes suggests the mood of the scene, the time
of the day, and the typle of location
Direction of Light
It models the objects in the scene, bring out their shape and texture.
 High Key
Scene
 Low Key
Scene
Mixed Lighting Scene
Basic lighting sources
 Key light: is the dominant source
of light. It usually establishes
character and mood of the shot.
 Fill light: Fill light gives the
appearance of ambient light and
determines the mood by keeping
shadows dark or by lightening
them.
 Back light: is designed to separate
the actors from the background.
This adds three-dimensionality to
the picture.
Control the Available light
 Identify principal light sources
 Identify the Key, back and fill lights from a
scene
 How to light by positioning
Filters
 Color correction filters
 Neutral density filters
 Effects filters
Color Correction Filters
 Color correction filters are used when shooting
tungsten-balanced film of doors or when using
daylight balanced color film indoors.
 85 filters:when shooting tungsten-balanced color
film out of doors.
85(the most commonly used), 85B, 85C
 80 filters:When using daylight-balanced color film
indoors.
Neutral Density Filters
 To cut down overall brightness and reduce
all colors equally.
 When to use ND filters
 Most common used: ND 0.3, ND 0.6 and
ND 0.9, need to increasing exposure (stops)
in 1, 2 and 3 stops
Effects Filters
 Diffusion filters, Nets,
 Ultraviolet (UV) filters: The filter most often used
for cutting haze and slightly warming the scene is
the Sky 1-A. If you don’t want to extra warmth of
Skylight filter, Haze 1 and 2A can be used
 Fog filter
 Low contrast filters: produce less halation and less
softening than fog filter. (Tiffen Ultra Contrast
filter)
 Polarizing filter: light striking an object radiates in
all directions
 Soft contrast filters
 Graduated filters