Communicative Role of Lighting in Photography

In photography, available lighting refers to any lighting sources that do not originate from the photographer for the reason of taking photos. It can be natural or artificial and with that said, natural lighting refers to sources of illumination that are naturally already accessible. Light stands to be the major component of each taken image and comes in distinct forms as well as producing different results. Some of them reach the subject straightly from the light source such as in clear day sunlight, and they are referred to as direct light. Diffused light passes via a semi-transparent material from the source to the subject. While silhouette lighting refers to giving your item a glow which one can meter the object itself or the sky (Cadava 3). Finally, there is direct-diffused lighting that possesses the characteristic of both direct and diffused light.

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Light can be defined as a natural agent that enables vision as well as stimulating sight. Lighting played a big part in pictorialism, a type of photography that was popular in the 19th and 20th centuries, such as in taking and changing photographs via editing to give it more resemblance of painting. Consequently, an image which has beautiful colors that are made by photo's natural light being saturated was produced. Thus, the contents of the image are either blurred or not sharp. Also, as a design element, high contrast lighting has been used in modernist photography were sharp focusing of images is the main idea, because it glorifies everything. Also, it has the direction, quantity, color and quality that provide texture, character and shape to the intended image (Silverman 17).

Having studied the role of lighting in both pictorialist and modernist photography, one can conclude that in both scenarios without lighting there will be no photographs the object means nothing without light (Johnston 12). At the same time, it is precisely that lighting serves different roles in pictorialist and modernist photographs. In pictorialist, light saturation has led to the production of an unnatural image. While, in modernist photographs, lighting requires high contrast of light and dark to provide the intended image with texture, character and the shape.

Rembrandt lighting refers to a lighting technique that can be attained by use of a reflector and one light, or two lights hence producing images that look compelling and natural. It was used in historical photographs to make shadows appear in nature with the only half face of the image illuminated (Cadava 3). Despite, the past use, it also has contemporary applications such as studio portrait photography that comprises of production of images that emerge to be natural and compelling. Also, it is applied to creating a geometric shape on the face.

Light is known to consist of several qualities that depend on the time of the day, light source, location and season. Thus, it can either be soft or hard light. From the history of photography, the portrait above was used as an example to illustrate qualities of light in an image. It was captured in 1853 by Mary Dillwyn, and it is clear that the picture was lit by the hard light that was found on a hot sunny day. The reason is that the image brightness has a range between the area lit directly by the source of light and its casted shadow (Silverman 17).

Works Cited

Cadava, Eduardo. Words of light: theses on the photography of history. Princeton University Press, 2018.

Dillwyn, Mary. Catalogue of Seals in the National Museum of Wales: Seal dies, Welsh seals, papal bullae. Vol. 1. National Museum Wales, 1853.

Johnston, Sean F. A history of light and colour measurement: science in the shadows. CRC Press, 2015.

Silverman, Kaja. "The Miracle of Analogy, or The History of Photography, Part 1." (2015): 1719.