I am in a beginner photography class and I am supposed to take pictures and focus on the lighting. We can not use a flash. My teacher told us to avoid using animals and people as subjects. I am stuck on ideas. What type of pictures can you take to focus on light? Please help!!! Tricia

-- Tricia Lang (twbj322@aol.com), September 30, 1999

Answers

I'm not real sure I understand your question about focusing on the lighting. However, if I'm thinking right, maybe you could find a room where there is direct sunlight coming into a room and falling on an object in an area of the floor with the rest of the room dark. Then again, if your question isn't about focusing on the lighting literally but meaning concentrating on the lighting, I would still say to make a photo similar to that described above. With the light on your subject, a closeup of a flower, weed etc., which is lighted differently from its sourroundings.

-- Joe Cole (jcole@apha.com), September 30, 1999.

I too am a little confused by the wording of the assignment. But I am reminded of what Edward Steichen said. "All we can really photograph is light". Perhaps your teacher is trying to get you to concentrate on the different qualities that light brings to any object. When you do, you will know that we can never really see the same object twice. And this is good; the world is full of constantly changing photographs.

-- chuck k (kleesattel@webtv.com), September 30, 1999.

Get a clip light like what they sell at hardware stores.

Maybe get three or four. Get a variety of bulb wattages 50, 100, 150.

Pick some objects of different qualities - very textured like a brick, little texture like a marble, opaque, translucent, transparent etc.

Common household objects, a glass of water, an egg, a glass of milk tissue paper, cellophane, etc. etc. etc.

maybe a wig dummy head or a 3-d human-like form - your baby brothers Star Wars Action figures.

Then, while keeping the camera on a tripod, make a series of exposures of the objects, keeping the object stationary and moving a single light closer and farther from the object.

Now do another set where the distance remains the same but the angle of the light relative to the subject changes, hi, low, left, right, front, side, back etc. etc. etc.

Now using the same object(s) use two ligts of different wattages and place them at different angles and different distances.

Try putting something between the light and the object - a translucent shower curtain, a white bed sheet, draperies, etc. etc. etc.

Take notes, have fun, use black & white film (or XP2) Get books on photographic lighting from the library. Go to Borders or Barnes & Noble and see if you can find the series on photographic lighting co- authored by Roger Hicks and Frances Schultz. Look at the diagrams and images.

When is this due?

-- Sean yates (yatescats@yahoo.com), September 30, 1999.

Since a picture is worth 1000 words (and Sean has said them) Here's an example

-- Nigel Smith (nlandgl@eisa.net.au), September 30, 1999.

Also, you could go outside and take a picture of a subject, say, early morning, noon, and, near sunset, and each time it'll look different, a different light, the subject could be anything, house, tree, etc.

-- John L. Blue (bluescreek@hotmail.com), September 30, 1999.

I assume your teacher wants you to avoid people and animals because they can move, but I sense that you're interested these subjects. My suggestion is to look at this as a technique-building exercise, and you can always start photographing people and animals once you have learned about light.

I suggest walking around with your camera during the "golden hours" right after sunrise and before sunset. Look at how the sunlight falls on different objects and accentuates textures. Find translucent things and see how they interact with direct or indirect lighting. Find curved objects and see how light "models" them (brings out their dimensionality).

-- Mason Resnick (bwworld@mindspring.com), October 01, 1999.

In portraiture it's pretty usual to focus on the reflection of highlights in the eye.

-- Lot (lotw@wxs.nl), October 01, 1999.

Focus on a light, take pictures of lights!

-- Huw (huwgoo@hotmail.com), October 01, 1999.