I had a great conversation with someone the other day about lighting models who have lines, jowls, etc.. His advice was to shoot straight on, not high to the right like I usually start off. It made good sense, and such advice could have saved a lot of photos (how many times have I seen a beautiful woman only to discover I didn't get the beautiful woman I saw, but someone 20 years older, on film?).

This has led me to question a lot of the rules I've used for lighting. The strictest rule I've heard is: never shoot with the light below the subject, cuz it looks satanic. But If I have a model lying on a bed or resting in a chair, I sometimes see the light coming from below in my head.

You had to know my first post would be a freak-out over lighting rules, didn't you? Light is the crux of photography, but it's also the place I'm least willing to experiment. Sad.

-- shawn gibson (SeeInsideForever@yahoo.com), February 05, 2000

Answers

I know your prob....I had a fashion class and one of the models(later she became mah sweety) had the "bump nose"(i found out about the sunken chest only later!)....not that you could see the bump anytime ...just when the soft box(key etc) was at eyelevel or lower than usual....otherwise she was incredibly photogenic if you could work around this but it was trouble shooting and not experimentation...I, like you, think the rules of "eye-pleasing" lighting are much harder to break.

p.s. (she was a cool girl, she asked me to a Black Flag concert for our first date!)

-- Trib (linhof6@hotmail.com), February 05, 2000.

For a real potent beauty light that fills wrinkles with light (not shadow), the tried, true and trite ring flash can sometimes be made to look, if not original/unique, at least surprising and lush, especially when the background/accessories are carefully selected for such treatment... t

Shawn... are you really a small committee of trust funders with nothing better to do? How many people are you, really?

-- tom meyer (twm@mindspring.com), February 05, 2000.

ugh. the real problem is that I just might get one of those gross things. I really like Whartenberg (sp?) and Von Unwerth's use of ring flash (she does use rf, right?); but otherwise I find it usually pretty gross unless you are TRYING to look like you are on heroin...which does look cool sometimes (again ugh...)

Deeply saturated, mid-to-light valued colours look great with rf sometimes I think; but you gotta really USE the light as part of the composition; anyways this is just what I 'think' since I've never used rf myself...

I know tom...it's like I sleep, eat, and surf greenspun and company. I just started a full-time job ('bout blody time) so my extra time will be a lot less about learning, a lot more about doing--more to spend on film and models and equipment and beer and hotel rooms and flights to the moon, real ones, not the fanciful type...well OK maybe Hamilton

-- shawn gibson (SeeInsideForever@yahoo.com), February 05, 2000.

I shot last night and about 2 rolls were purposely with the light shooting up from below. I'll let you know how it turned out...

-- shawn gibson (SeeInsideForever@yahoo.com), February 06, 2000.

So how did it turn out?

-- Scott Flathouse (scott@pan-tex.net), February 17, 2000.

Oops. Some of the shoot turned out quite well, and some of it was just to demonic in the lighting, giving it a fetishistic look which really does nothing for me, since the original aim was not such (i.e., the lighting is working against the ideas). A little below is great, a lot I just don't seem to like.

-- shawn gibson (SeeInsideForever@yahoo.com), February 18, 2000.

I have used light from below in many portrait photos. My images have been most successful when the lower light is filling-in the shadows created by the main light that is above the subject. Take a look at this photo (http://www.mindspring.com/~jwc3/kathrin1.JPG) to see what I mean. Look at the reflection in her eyes -- you can see the light from below. A lot of light from below can look more intimate, as if you're having a candle-lit dinner with the person in the photo. If I'm not using a light below, I usually use a reflector to fill-in the shadows.

-- Joel Collins (jwc3@mindspring.com), February 24, 2000.

I'll use a big white or silver reflector for that effect, but set it well below Eye level to fill under the chin and stay out of the eyes. Those catchlights from your lower lights are really distracting (to me, a photographer who pays a lot of attention to catchlights. Maybe a non-photographer wouldn't mind)... t

-- tom meyer (twm@mindspring.com), February 24, 2000.