Learn To Control Light Effectively And Make All Of Your Images Come To Life

Despite the many advances of digital imaging, lighting problems remain a type of photographic flaw that can't easily be corrected in postproduction. Therefore, lighting skills remain just as critical as ever when capturing great digital images. In this fundamental book, Dr. Glenn Rand gives a complete understanding of photographic lighting--covering tools and techniques that can be applied to any subject or situation. For both studio and location lighting, Rand covers every variable to help photographers avoid problems and achieve the beautiful lighting effects desired.

Early digital photography teacher Ike Lea said many years ago, bad lighting with digital imaging, is still bad lighting. His point was clear: while digital imaging can be used to correct many errors that happened in the capture, if the lighting is bad, post-capture tools can do little but cover the faults. These tools cannot correct poor lighting. While it is true that great lighting cannot, in and of itself, make great photographs, bad lighting will surely ruin photographs.

Lighting For Photography presents the tools that are needed to create and control photographic lighting, going beyond avoiding bad lighting to gaining an understanding of how to use lighting as the ultimate tool of the photographer, whether with digital capture or film. Though many books approach lighting from a genre-specific stance, this volume covers the principles of lighting, rules that are not confined to any single pursuit. This "gives readers an understanding of the hows and whys of light and lighting", rather than a series of limited solutions that work only in certain situations.

To this end, the book addresses not only studio lighting, where photographers have total control, but also lighting in the scenic environment, where they are at the mercy of nature. Because photography happens in all environments, a solid knowledge of how to apply these basic concepts will benefit all types of images.

The book begins with how light is created and the optical functions that provide the ultimate controls for lighting. These underpinnings are followed with a discussion of the qualities of light. Next, the book covers the use of various control methods for manipulating and modifying light, as well as how to best measure and capture it. With these basics in hand, the book then moves on to discuss defining the shape and form of the subjects, followed by a brief description of lighting highly reflective surfaces and transparent materials. Finally, the book addresses the specific types of lighting equipment used by professional photographers.

In addition to sample images, the book includes numerous diagrams and detailed captions that explain why particular lighting methods were chosen, as well as how they were executed.