Blog task 4 - Lighting characters

This blog task, I wanted to go over lighting scenarios.

Researching terms such as Key: which is classified as the main source of light within a photo or video, for example, if you are in a dark room in a horror movie set, then you only have one flashing bulb light, that would count as the scene key light. Which also adds to the scene creating the atmosphere.

Fill: where the subject's shadows are covered or lit up using other sources of light, this is normally used to get equal tones within a shot, having too much shadow can make a shot seem jarring and draws your attention away from the subject.

Rim light: This is used to capture the edge of an object or subject, only highlighting around it to give it a silhouette or very intense shadows. Rim lighting can be used to convey a mysterious connotation due to lack of detail presented on the subject when the image is taken.

When trying to set up lighting in my scene, it was difficult to get a good balance of lighting, I wanted to make sure to preserve as much detail as I could with lighting situations. Making sure some areas were not too dark, but also colours weren't washed out if the lighting was too bright, i.e: metallic parts.

I found that flat lighting with a lit background worked the most. Having a lit background helped the gladiator stand out on the background, furthermore, having black made it seem like it was in a void and did not suit the situation.

Having heavy lighting such as hard key with kickers did as I predicted, where having too much lighting casted harsh shadows and washed out some of the colour. A good example of this was on the boots, where the grey is on the lighter side, gets washed out. So knowing this, I discounted anything that had a high key/bright lighting setup. Going along with the phrase 'less is more' I continued to use flat lighting, in order to show my gladiator in its full potential, without being drowned out by the scene.

Split with fill

Flat lighting

Hard Key with kickers

Key and fill