Dance - Carlos Acosta

Saw Carlos Acosta and Zenaida Yanowsky at ENO on Friday.  I love dance and this was fantastic. I am including it here on my learning log as what particularly wowed me was the lighting. The piece choreographed by Russell Maliphant with lighting design by Michael Hulls I especially loved. The way the lighting isolated Carlos's muscles just capturing the edges. How did he do that? I found my self studying the lighting through the entire production.  I made a couple of very rough drawings of lighting I want to try out as part of assignment 4.

Variety with a low Sun

For this exercise the brief was to take four photos when the sun is low using daylight white balance.
The results are image top left, front lighting. The result is harsh shadows on the models face. plus she is squinting as the sun is shining directly into her eyes.  The image top right has the sun behind the model.  harder for the photographer as you are shooting directly into the sun. I recall comments from a photographer when talking about his fees. Double if shooting into the sun. As the background was going to be burnt out I chose a very wide aperture to make it even less important to the picture. The sun behind  is more flattering to the model with no harsh shadows on her face.  The bottom left hand photo is using the sun to side light. This was also difficult with the grass on the sun side of the image burnt out and the models dark clothing losing detail. i do like side lighting for portraits but with a little more control so that the light is diffused. The final image, bottom right hand corner is using edge lighting.  I decided to take this image so that the edge lighting would not be burnt out. This meant that the rest of the image would be underexposed. To be able to see the models face I would need to use flash in this situation if I want to keep all the detail in the lighting around her hair.