Page 35 - Lighting the Un-lightable Volume 1 #3

The volume of light in this space was extremely inconsistent:

Though largely filtered by the trees, the light coming through
1 the wall of windows was still rather intense. By the time we were
in this area, the light was lower in the sky and the overhang out-
side despite its size had little effect. The wall of windows had a
very high volume of light.

5 Though we couldn't physically see it, this area was substantially

darker than the area closer to the wall of windows. In fact, as the
2 law of Inverse Square suggests, the volume of light in this area
was between two and four F-stops below the wall of windows.
Using three F-stops as the mean difference, we knew we were
at the edge of what the camera could see. We also had to watch
how we lit the space - we didn't want to over light the floor and
lose detail.

4

This area was between three and four F-stops under the light
near the wall of windows. Moreover, the volume of light was
3 substantially lower and the shadows clearly deeper and darker.

Still, there was enough light coming down from the wood fram-
ing the stairs overhead to make the volume of light here man-
ageable. We knew we could raise the volume enough to extend
3
the dynamic range of color where we wanted it to be.

The volume of light here was at its lowest. We have learned that
however we saw this space, to the camera it would be near to-
tally black. We were limited in what we could do - we had only
two 1,000 Watt strobes with us that day. The only option was to
4 push light under the stairs while keeping the wood outside this
area as natural as possible.

Though this diagram suggests that the volume of light in this space was consistent, a closer look shows that it isn't. In fact, there are six or seven different volumes of light in this area. The areas closer
to the open space and the wall of windows could be easily blown out while the areas directly to the right under the overhang created by upper floors and the boardroom could easily become so black they
would be lost to the camera. We were able to reflect light off the overhanging and down into the open spaces. In order to do this, we had to be very careful about where we placed our lights and how we
"broke" the light in the open space.

We decided that the optimal location to "break" the light was above the lamp (see the next page). This would fill the space in section three - effectively making it equal to section one. In turn, this would
fill sections two and four. The light reflecting upwards would "fix" our problems in section five.

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