08.01.2024 – Lighting Aesthetics
Week 11 – Lighting Aesthetics
Lighting Purposes and Functions
Light serves a dual purpose: shaping the outer space and evoking inner emotions. Achieving this depends on skillfully controlling shadows.
Nature of Shadows
- Shading: Variation of reflected light on a surface facing the light source.
- Shadows: Occluded regions from the light source, comprising attached and cast shadows.
- Attached Shadow: Fixed to the object, providing form and texture.
- Cast Shadow: Independent, offering visual variety and interest. It conveys the object’s location, time of day, season, and mood.
- Falloff: Contrast between light and shadow sides, with a relative rate of change.
- Slow Falloff: Soft lighting with low brightness contrast, creating a gradual transition.
- Fast Falloff: Hard lighting with high brightness contrast, producing dense and dark attached shadows.
Outer Orientation Functions
- Spatial Orientation: Reveals the basic shape and location of objects.
- Tactile Orientation: Uses fast-falloff lighting to emphasize surface texture, often from the side.
- Time Orientation: Reflects brightness based on the background (light for daylight, dark for nighttime), and cast shadow length and angle indicating time and season.
Inner Orientation Functions
Establishing Mood and Atmosphere:
- Low-key Lighting (down energy): Low overall light level with fast falloff, selectively illuminating specific areas.
- High-key Lighting (up energy): Abundance of light with slow falloff, nonspecific distribution.
- Above-eye-level Key Lighting: Places the principal light source above eye level for usual shadows.
- Below-eye-level Key Lighting: Creates a disorienting and frightening feel.
- Predictive Lighting: Anticipates and reveals upcoming events, often working with other sensory cues.
- Lights as Dramatic Agents: By revealing the light source, intensifies the scene.
Standard Lighting Technique
- Key Light: The principal and strongest light revealing the object’s shape.
- Fill Light: Positioned opposite the camera from the key light, controlling falloff.
- Back Light: Located at the back of the subject, separating the figure from the background and providing sparkle.
(Additional: Side Light, Kicker, Background or Set Light)
Major Lighting Types
- Chiaroscuro Lighting: Emphasizes contrast between light and shadow areas, contributing to various aesthetic functions.
- Rembrandt Lighting (soft): Low-key, carefully illuminates selected areas with a dark yet illuminated background.
- Cameo Lighting (strong): Fast falloff, dense shadows, and minimal spill, focusing on illuminated figures against a very dark background.
- Flat Lighting: Highly diffused and slow-falloff lighting creating a high-key environment for energy and cleanliness, yet implying mechanization and depersonalization.
- Silhouette Lighting: A hybrid of Chiaroscuro and Flat lighting, featuring unlit figures against a bright background. Emphasizes contour over volume and texture with high contrast light/dark.