Lighting Workshop

The lighting workshop today consisted of getting used to using different lights and lighting arrangements to light up a model and background. We experimented with different set ups to see what sort of shadows we could create on the model and in the background.

In the first part of the workshop we went through all the standard health and safety you must understand in order to know how to safely operate the equipment and use them in a professional environment. 

We then experimented with the white balance setting on the cameras, taking short clips of the lighting inside and natural lighting outside, without adjusting the white balance, and then adjusting it to compare the two outcomes.

After lunch we had a chance to overview how lighting can be set up to gain certain shadows and effects with a model. We then broke into smaller groups to have a chance to create our own setup, play around with key lighting, back lighting and fall lighting.

Our group began playing around with the setup and lighting, using some neutral filters to soften the harsh lighting. After we had played around with the traditional setup, we decided to try out some lighting using gel filters and see what sort of effect we could create using all the different colours on the different lights. The effect of each colour varied due to the position of the light we used it with.

Using colours such as red and blue gave a really dramatic effect to the images, also giving the models very interestingly coloured shadows. We switched the gels around so they were on each light, as the different placement of the colour had a different effect.

I really enjoyed this workshop as it showed me how many cool effects you can achieve from using the coloured gels, but also how with a simple lighting setup you can easily create so many different scenes.