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April 24, 2006
Bright-for-Dark Photography
I plan to make some dramatically-lit photos (combined with Maxwell renders). As a prelude to this work, I an experimenting with some issues related to photographic exposure. My goal in this experiment is to create the illusion of a spotlight illuminating a figure on an otherwise dark stage without actually having a particularly dark stage. It's nothing new, but I want to try it myself.
The photograph above represents a human figure on a stage under subdued window lighting.
Here's the same set, but now I'm "whacking" the figure with an overpowered key light. This adds even more light to the set.
When I expose for the new bright key light, it's as if I've effectively "darkened the room."
By going from a one second exposure to a 1/250th second exposure (for a given aperture) I have darkened the scene by 8 f-stops. I even seem to have reversed the lighting; the window light is no longer apparent at all. What's more, I can have the depth of field and short shutter speeds not normally associated with low light photography - if I choose.
Photograph doesn't always have to "mimic" how you perceive the scene to be. I remember one day I visited a taping of The David Letterman Show. I was struck by how pale, washed out and desaturated the set and everyone on it looked in person, and how richly contrasty and lustrously saturated it looked on the monitors.
Posted by digital artform at April 24, 2006 01:46 PM