Kyle Berg

Today was our second chance to get into the studio and practice lighting techniques. Last time we only used one light to make different looks and shadows. This time we were working on using 2 and 3 light combinations, with one key light, a fill light, and finally a hair light. I thought that today would be a lot of joking around since Arno and Bruce were in my group, but we ended up being more methodical and really thinking through the process. We still had a good time, but it took us all 3 hours to learn from our mistakes, figure out the lighting, and complete the assignment. First I shot Arno using the Split Hatchet from the key light to split the light down the middle of his face. At first we used a 1:2 ratio, so there wasn’t much difference between the two sides. The 1:4 ratio showed more variation in the shadows, but was still much more subtle than our exercises from the previous session. For the third part of the assignment, we had to use a key light, a back light, and a hair light. I struggled through the setup for quite a while, but Allison (the teacher) helped me fix my mistakes. I used the Loop method to cast a shadow on Bruce’s cheek and under his nose while also backlighting his silver mane with a hair light and illuminating the background with a light and a purple gel. He didn’t think purple would be a good color, but I was in charge and convinced him it would go well with his color of hair. All in all, the shots turned out pretty well, even thought we didn’t have time to get really creative. When I pulled the pictures up in full size on my computer, I couldn’t believe the detail in the photos. These digital cameras are getting really good!