First Official Photography Lesson

On Wednesday 23rd of September was my first official photography lesson with my instructor Victoria, where we explored and set out eyes on our first type of lighting called Rembrandt lighting.  When using Rembrandt lighting there is a specific diagram where everything is place in the studio, for instance the equipment that is used is a light sauce, a subject, camera and a reflector. This equipment is all placed is certain places to create the perfect Rembrandt lighting. If you aren't awhere what "Rembrandt lighting" is, it is a lighting technique that is used in studio portrait photography. This type of lighting is popular because it is capable of producing images which appear both natural and compelling with a minimum of equipment. You will be aware when Rembrandt lighting is at work as you will see a triangle shape underneath the subjects eye, also for the triangle to appear the light should be placed above the subjects head almost at the side of the subject also.

As you can see in this diagram every piece of equipment is placed in a specific place but if the triangle does not appear it is either because you need to instruct your subject to either turn their body or face, or perhaps move your key lighting until you reach the point where you have the perfect triangle underneath the eye. Myself and my other colleague both took the opportunity to take it in turns to experiment this type of lighting on one another and found out using a black background with no lighting except the key light also including the subject sat on a stool looking straight at the camera worked extremely well. Through the lesson we had two shots, one where we used a dish reflector with the image number being 100/8142 and the second shot with the dish reflector also plus adding a silver reflect with the image number being 100/8155. During both shots we were introduce to a white soft box which soften the lighting and really gave an image its best quality, where as white out it made the lighting on the image really sharp and gave it a dark look. When changing the silver reflectors position the image number changed each time, for instance when to the side the number was 8163, above was 8164 and underneath was 8162. Next photography lesson will be all about butterfly lighting which is also used for portraits.