Learning From Other Photos

One of my favorite things to do in my ‘spare time’ is look through magazines and or at other photographers work. Sometimes you can find some great inspiration but what I really enjoy is looking at lighting. It’s almost a game for me… ‘How Is This Photograph Lit’ starring Meg Rodney as lead detective… or at least that’s what runs through my head.

The biggest giveaway in trying to tell how a photo was lit is to to look at the catch lights in the eyes. The first reason is that you can normally tell how many lights were used (as long as they are in front of the subject, obviously). Secondly, sometimes you can tell which modifiers were used which is a big plus!

In the photo below it is very easy to tell that one light was used in the L’Oreal ad of Beyonce.  

Zooming in closer to just the eye you can get a good idea that the modifier that they used was quite large and round. My guess is either and octobank or a hexagonal softbox…

We can also look at shadows on the face which will tell us where the light was placed. Shadows normally will fall under the nose, bottom lip and under eyebrows. In this photo there is a good shadow under the nose which goes to the left. Now we know that the light was placed higher than the nose and slightly to the right side of the face.

In a photo I took, you can very easily tell that I used two lights to create this looking at the catch lights. 

What you can not necessarily tell is that I used grids on the stripbanks to get a more directional light…but hey, you can give away EVERYTHING in a photo!

So the question becomes is this cheating or stealing? I don’t think so. There are virtually hundreds/thousands/millions of ways to position lights in variation with what the person in the photo is doing, what they are wearing and where they are so an exact replica would be hard. It’s fun, for me, to ‘discover’ new lighting set-ups and techniques.

Next time you see a photo you like, try to think about how it was lit!