Type of Light in Photography

Understanding Frontlight , Sidelight , and Backlight

An understanding of the three basic types of lighting is essential if you intend on taking control in the lighting process.

Frontlight, as described in this

chapter, is the light coming from behind the photographer and striking the subject.

Depending on the time of day, using the sun as your main lighting source can be harsh (if shot around midday) or beautiful and soft (if using late afternoon light).

A fatal flaw many aspir ing photogr apher s make is tr ying to shoot a nice por trait in

midday sun. The light is too har sh and creates hard and unappealing shadows, and the light has no war mth to it.

The late afternoon light can be the only light source the photographer needs. Turning the subject ever so slightly from the light falling directly upon his face can provide enough

shadowing to help create depth in the por trait.

82 Sidelight can come from an artiﬁcial light source such as a lamp or ﬂash, or it can come from the sun. Using sidelight eﬀectively can add depth to the photo by turning the subject into or away from the light to control the amount of light striking the face. I shot this photo with full sidelight as well as light from a three-quarter angle.

Using ar tificial lighting, such as a flash in a “soft box” (which emulates late daylight— beautiful light—from a source the size of a window), by placing the unit immediately

behind the camer a, I created a ver y flat light

that str ikes the subject’s face equally from the camer a’s angle .

If you move the light box oﬀ to the right of the side of the subject, you create a sidelit photo. By itself, this light is not terribly appealing.

Using the soft box from the side lighting position and using a reﬂector to ﬁll the harshly shadowed area, you can create a very nicely

lit portrait. The beauty of this system is that

Here , the soft box was moved to the r ight of the subject, making a strong shadow across

the face . I find this lighting unflatter ing due to its har shness.

only one light is required; the backlight can be created by the sun or the ambient light. In this portrait, I used a general manual exposure for the wall in the background, thereby making it a part of the composition.

You can use the ambient available light as your backlighting and the reﬂector ﬁll light as your key light (the main light source, be it sun, ﬂash, or a table lamp—whatever creates the main light on the subject). This method

provides a multi-light setup with no lights and just a reﬂector. But the results look like a photo shot under very controlled lighting conditions.

Now you see why many photographers carry a reﬂector with them. Adding, controlling, or changing light gives

the photographer more options when photographing people.

The power of light is the essence of photography, and photography is what we do and what we love. The mind thinks in terms of images, and those images are awash with light or they wouldn’t exist. Our jobs, as photographers, is to use that light, studying

it ever so carefully and painting with it in our viewﬁnder. Watch the light. See how it moves across the land, how it paints and illuminates and creates our reality.

Keeping lighting to a minimum can often

produce great results. A main light source , an

exposure for the ambient light, and a reflector to fill the shadowed area create a nicely lit photo.

How To : Understanding Light

by Joe McNally

Joe McNally shoots assignments for magazines, ad agencies, and graphic design ﬁrms. Clients include Sports Illustrated, ESPN Magazine, National Geographic, LIFE, Time, Fortune, New York Magazine, Business Week, Rolling Stone, New York Stock Exchange, Target, Sony, GE, Nikon, Lehman Brothers, and PNC Bank. In addition to having been a recipient of the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for outstanding magazine photography, McNally has been honored for his images by Pictures of the Year, The World Press Photo Foundation, The Art Directors’ Club, Photo District News, American Photo, Communication Arts, Applied Arts Magazine, and Graphis. Joe’s teaching credentials include the Eddie Adams Workshop, the National Geographic Masters of Contemporary Photography, the Smithsonian

Institute Masters of Photography, Rochester Institute of Technology, Maine Photo Workshops, Department of Defense Worldwide Military Workshops, Santa Fe Workshops, and the Disney Institute. He has also worked on numerous “Day in the Life” projects.

One of McNally’s most notable large-scale projects, “Faces of Ground Zero—Giant Polaroid Collection,” has become known as one of the most primary and signiﬁcant artistic responses to the tragedy at the World Trade Center. Joe was described by American Photo magazine as “perhaps the most versatile photojournalist working today” and was listed as one of the 100 most important people in photography. In January 1999, Kodak and Photo District News honored Joe by inducting him into their Legends Online archive. In 2001, Nikon Inc. bestowed upon him a similar honor when he was placed on their website’s prestigious list of photographers noted as “Legends Behind the Lens.”

I have always thought of light as language. I ascribe to light the same qualities and characteristics one could generally apply to the spoken or written word. Light has color and tone, range, emotion, inﬂection, and timbre. It can sharpen or soften a picture. It can change the meaning of a photo. Like language, when used effectively, it has

the power to move people, viscerally and emotionally, and inform them. The use of light in our pictures harkens back to the original descriptive term we use to deﬁne this beloved endeavor of making pictures: Photography, from the Greek phot-graphos, meaning “to write with light.”

Writing with light! As a photographer, it is very important to know how to do this. So why are so many of us illiterate? Or rather, selectively illiterate. I have seen photographers with an acutely beautiful sense of

natural light, indeed a passion for it, start to vibrate like a tuning fork when a strobe is placed in their hands. Some photographers will wait for hours for the right time of day. Some will quite literally chase a swatch of photons reﬂecting off the sideview mirror of a slow-moving bus down the block at dawn just to see if it will momentarily hit the wizened face of the elderly gentleman reading

the paper at the window of the corner coffee shop. These very same shooters will look hesitantly, quizzically, even fearfully at a source of artiﬁcial light as if they are

auditioning for a part in Quest for Fire and had never seen such magic before.

I was blessed early in my career by having my self- esteem and photographic efforts subjected to assessment by old-school wire service photo editors who, when they

were on the street as photographers, started their day by placing yesterday’s cigar between their teeth, hitching up a pair of pants you could ﬁt a zeppelin into, and looping a 500-volt wet cell battery pack through their belts and snug against their ample hips. Armed with a potato masher and a speed graphic (which most likely had the

f-stop ring taped down at f8), they went about their day, indoors and out, making ﬂash pictures. What we refer to now as ﬁll ﬂash, they called “synchro sun.” Like an umbrella on a rainy day or their car keys, they wouldn’t think of leaving the house without their strobe.

They brought that ethic to their judgment of ﬁlm as editors. During the 1978 NY–KC baseball playoffs I returned to the UPI temporary darkroom in Yankee Stadium with what I thought was a terriﬁc ISO 1600 available-ﬂuorescence photo of one of the losing Royal

players slumped against the wall surrounded by discarded jerseys. Larry Desantis, the news picture editor, never took his eye from his Agfa-loup while whipping through my ﬁlm as he croaked in his best Brooklynese, “Nice picture, kid. Never shoot locker room without a strobe.

I give this advice to you for free.”

That advice was pretty much an absolute, but I have survived long enough in this nutty business to know there are no real absolutes. Sometimes the best frames are made from broken rules and bad exposures. But one thing that Larry was addressing—albeit through the prism of his no frills, big city, down and dirty get-it-on-the-wire point of view—was the use of light. What sticks with us, always,

is light. It is the wand in the conductor’s hand. We watch it, follow it, respond to it, and yearn to ring every nuance of substance, meaning, and emotion out of it. It leads us, and we shoot and move to its rhythm.

I could wax eloquently about how, in a moment of photographic epiphany, I discovered and became

conversant with the magic of strobe light. But I would be lying. Any degree of proﬁciency and acquaintance I have with the use of light of any kind has been a matter of hard

work, repeated failures, basic curiosity, and a simple instinct for survival. I realized very early in my career that I was not possessed of the brilliance required to dictate to my clients that I would only shoot available-light black and white ﬁlm with a Leica. My destiny was to be a general-assignment magazine photographer, by and large, and, to that end, I rapidly converted to the school of available light being “any

*** damn light that’s available.”

Because light is just light. It’s not magic, but a very real thing, and we need to be able to use it, adjust it, and bend it to our advantage. At my lighting workshops I always tell students that light is like a basketball. It bounces off the ﬂoor, hits the wall, and comes back to you. It is pretty basic, in many ways.

Given the simple nature of light, I offer some equivalently simple tips for using it effectively in your photographs. Mind you, I offer these tips—dos and don’ts if you will—with the caveat that all rules are meant to

be broken, and there is no unifying, earth-encompassing credo any photographer can employ in all situations he or she will encounter. All photo assignments are situational, and require improvisational, spontaneous responses. At this point in my career, the only absolute I would offer

to anyone is to not do this at all professionally, chuck the photo/art school curricula you’re taking that offers academic credit for courses called “Finding Your Zen Central,” and get an MBA. (However, if you’re reading this, it is probably too late.)

Joe’s Lighting Tips, or things to remember when you are on location and the ﬂying fecal matter is hitting the rotating blades of the air-circulating device:

Step 1

Always start with one light. Multiple lights all at once can create multiple problems, which can be difﬁcult to sort out. Put up one light. See what it does.You may have to go no further. (The obvi- ous corollary to this: Look at the nature of the existing light.You just might be able to leave the strobes in the trunk of your car.)

Step 2

Generally, warm is better than cool. When lighting por- traits, a small bit of warming gel is often very effective

in obtaining a pleasing result. Face it, people look better slightly warm, as if they are sitting with a bunch of swells in the glow of the table lights at Le Cirque, rather than

sort of cold, as if they are the extras on The Sopranos who end up on a hook in a meat locker.

Step 3

During location assessment—those crucial first few min- utes when you are trying to determine how awful your day is about to get—look at where the light is coming

from already. From the ceiling? Through the windows or

the door? Am I going for a natural environmental look and therefore merely have to tweak what exists, or do I have

to control the whole scene by overpowering existing light with my own lights? What does my editor or publication want? How much time do I have? Will my subject have

the patience to wait while I set up for two hours, or do I have to throw up a light and get this done? (Lots and

lots of practical questions should race through your head immediately, because your initial assessment process will determine where you will place your camera. Given the

strictures of location work, deadlines, and subject avail-

ability, this first shot may be the only shot you get, so this initial set of internal queries is extremely important.)

Step 4

When wrapped up in the euphoria (or agony) of the

shoot, do a mental check on yourself. If you are working with a long lens, try to imagine the scene with a wide lens from the other side of the room. Or think about a high or low angle. Always remember the last thing most editors

want to see is a couple hundred frames shot from exactly the same position and attitude. Move around. Think out-

side of the lens and light you are currently using. This can be summed up by the nagging question that lurks in the back of my mind when I’m on location: “Hey, why don’t I do my re-shoot now?”

Step 5

Never shoot locker room without a strobe. (Just kidding!)

Step 6

Remember as an assignment photographer that one “aw s*** ” wipes out three “attaboys.”

Step 7

Remember that the hardest thing about lighting is not lighting, but the control of light. Any idiot can put up

an umbrella. It takes effort and expertise to speak with the light, and bring different qualities of shadow, color, and tone to different areas of the photo. Flags, cutters, honeycomb grids, barn doors, gels, or the dining room

tablecloth gaffer-taped to your light source will help you control and wrangle the explosion of photons that oc- curs when you trip a strobe. If you work with all these elements and practice with them, you will soon see that

in the context of the same photo, you can light Jimmy dif- ferently from Sally. (A handy tip: If you want something to look interesting, don’t light all of it.)

Step 8

A white wall can be your friend or your enemy. White walls are great if you are looking for bounce and fill, and

open, airy results. They are deadly if you are trying to light someone in a dramatic or shadowy way. I carry in my grip bags some cutup rolls of what I call black flocking paper

(it goes by different names in the industry) that, when

taped to walls, turns your average office into a black hole, allowing the light to be expressed in exactly the manner you intended.

Step 9

Experiment! You should have a written or mental Rolodex of what you have tried and what looks good. That is not

to say you should do the same thing all the time, quite the contrary. But when you have to move fast, you must have

the nuts and bolts and f-stops of your process down cold,