Page 84 - NyghtVision Magazine Volume 3 #3

Left photo: Hannah in front of the fireplace. The detail in the
brick on the fireplace is excellent. Skin tones are natural and
the shadows are soft.
Right Photo: Hannah in the rocking chair in the corner near
the front of the house and the foyer. Note the detail in the
fabric. Even worn spots are visible. The detail in the plant is
quite good as well.
In the end I was able to achieve the effect I
wanted by placing the lights with the umbrel-
las facing away from the room. One of the
lights was placed in the doorway opposite the
front of the house. To prevent that light from
being mirrored in the windows on the front of
the house, I made sure the unbrella was paral-
lel to the wall behind it. The second light was
placed in the door way to the foyer. (See Figure
3) Because the brick on the fireplace was a ma-
jor problem, and because of the shadows that
this light would create in the corners, I aimed
this light at roughly 45 degress to the fireplace.
Placing this light at an angle also kept it from
being visible in the window to its right.
Did I have to move my lights? Just once.
And only slightly. When Hannah sat in the
rocking chair by the corner to the right of the
light placed in the doorway to the foyer (see
the lead photo in this article), I did have to
use far less light than I might otherwise. Also, move that light about 15 degrees to its right.
if the goal is to light the space and not the sub- This allowed more light to move into the cor-
ject, knowing how to fill the space with light is ner around Hannah. I was able to do it while
critical.) she was settling into the chair.
The images we created that day, as is evi-
I decided that I needed to use a different denced in the images in this essay, captured
approach or I would spend too much time the emotion of the moment. The detail in the
moving lights and - as I have already noted - I rug, Hannah's dress, the couch, is superb. The
wanted nothing to do with that. shadows are dramatic but they are not void of
If my analysis was correct, I needed to place detail. Once again, understanding the inter-
my lights either in the darker areas of the room action between light and the structure of the
or where they would fill the dark spaces. That room provided a solution to a seemingly com-
would be difficult given that I needed to face plex problem.
the lights away from Hannah and away from
the windows. It was also important that I place In the next issue, we will return to Belmont
the lights so that with little or no adjustment and explore the problems mirrors and pol-
they would create the volume of light I would ished granite present. The model will be Kat
need throughout our session. Marie. ■

84 | lighting the un-lightable