Lighting and Camera workshop

Lighting and Camera workshop

During an after school session, I attended a lighting and camera workshop run by a photography teacher at our school. This workshop was very beneficial as I had learnt new aspects about lighting and camera work that I hadn't known before; this ultimately expanded my lighting and camera knowledge as a had learnt a couple of new things.

Firstly, we were told about 3 point lighting; this is a particular technique used in most videos and films whereby you will need three types of lights in order to utilize the technique. The three types of lights are; key light, fill light and back light. 

The key light is the main light. It is the strongest and has the most influence of the look of the scene. 

Fill light is the secondary light and is placed on the opposite side of the key light, it is used to fill the shadows which is created by the key light. The fill will usually be softer and less bright than the key; in order to achieve this I could move the light further away.

The third type of light is the back light, this is placed behind the subject and lights it from the rear, as opposed to providing direct lighting (like the key and fill), its purpose is to provide definition and subtle highlights around the subject's outlines. This helps separate the subject from the background and provide a three-dimensional look. 

I was also informed about the rule of thirds; something which I had learnt in GCSE media. Rule of thirds is where you imagine breaking an image down into thirds (both vertical and horizontal) so that there is 9 sides and whilst taking an image you must carefully consider where the subject of your photo must lie within (usually centred). 

Practical Workshop

After learning about the theoretical side of lighting and camerawork in the workshop; it was time for us to get to use the gear for a photoshoot.The importance of camerawork was emphasised here for example making sure that your subjects are centralised and making sure that you are focusing on the subjects for a crisp image. We were also informed that changing the camera angles in certain shots can change the notion of the image, for example and low angle shot in an image of a band could show importance especially if the main person is standing in the front and how a zoom could be used to only focus on one particular member. 

In this photoshoot we set up professional lighting (we used three types of lighting), and a white backdrop which enhanced our images. Lighting was vital in this case because it emphasised the shots making them look a lot clear and crisp as opposed to having no lighting at all which made it seem dull and boring. The photos that were taken in this workshop will be used for my ancillary task (both poster and digipak).

Working with green screens

A week later I decided to extend my camera knowledge and work with green screens, green screens (chroma keying) is a special effects/post production technique for compositioning (layering) two images or video streams together based on colour hues. The technique has been used heavily in many fields to remove a background from the subject of a photo or video – particularly the newscasting, motion picture and video game industries as well as music videos in this scenario.

Working with green screens has been interesting, I will use these for test edits even though I may not use chroma keying in my final production piece, but it was good experience as I have never used green screens before and to learn about green screens.