 So what do you think is really important to capturing a beautiful photograph? Well angle of light is a really important concept It's one of the concepts that when you once you get it You're going to really be able to take stronger photographs and the reason is because light is what sets the mood of your photographs Now let's take an example here We're going to draw a person and there's going to be a very poorly drawn person. I'm very sorry I'm not very talented at these kind of things So here we've got our person and they've got a head right here Now there's lots of different ways to light this person. You've got maybe a really big light source So maybe you've got like a really huge Maybe you've got the Sun one of the biggest light sources you can possibly have so you've got the Sun right here and Maybe between you and the Sun are some clouds This is creating a really huge light source So the light is going to be bouncing all over the place coming in from all types of different directions and creating what's called soft light Or diffuse light sometimes you'll hear it called diffused light Now you're also going to be able to light him with something really small So maybe you say you have a lamp and it's very close to him. So maybe you have like a little light bulb Ding ding ding light bulb and the light coming off of that is very small and very directional This is what's called hard or harsh light We'll just call it hard light And the difference between this is that when you use a hard light source, you're going to get lots of You're going to get lots of shadows So if you have maybe this person has a nose right here behind the nose There's going to be a very dark shadow right there and if you're using a soft light That's not going to be the case. You're just going to have a nice soft fill of all the features And you might have some soft shadows like kind of maybe over here on this side since the light is coming from From his left, but in general your light is going to be less Shadowy, it's not going to be as hard and we'll see some examples of this in a second Now another way of talking about light is its angle and its direction So more than just how hard that light source is you need to consider where the light is coming from So you can have light that's coming from and we're going to choose a different color here We're going to choose a strange color for light. We're going to choose pink So you can have light that comes from above so it's going to be high angle You can have light that comes from below so low angle You can have light that comes from the front and that's called frontal light And not from the left or right. We actually be coming from this direction really frontal would be more from Directly in front of the subject. You can have side lighting, which would actually be this one I was writing over here and So side lighting comes in from the left or the right and then you can have back lighting Which can kind of hard to draw but we'll have back lighting right here and Each one of these has strengths and weaknesses and uses that you can use to make stronger photographs So think about how different that something could look if you're lighting it from the front as from the back And we'll go show you some examples of that now So right now for the for the purpose of this lesson you want to think about two things You want to think about the hardness of the light and you want to think about the direction of the light So you want to think it comes from the front from the side from the back and if it comes from low or if it comes from above Alright, so let's take a look at what this might look like in a photograph Here you can see this photo of Alexander to the left is frontal lighting So the light is actually coming from two windows that are behind us and you can see that in his eyes And there's a big light source and the light is basically coming in from both sides right here It's coming in evenly on both sides and it's just very flat lighting So it can be very flattering in certain situations I'm not sure if it's necessarily the best lighting choice for this photograph But it is in a really good example of just very flat frontal lighting that's coming from slightly above You can actually you can't really see so much But you can see that the the line in his or the little dot in his eye is a little bit above center So that's also very flattering for portraits Now here you can see we've got hard lighting. So it is also diffused lighting Happened to be a very cloudy day when we were taking these photographs through a big window and Here to the right you can see that we have backlighting This is my roommate Joseph you've maybe seen in a few other Videos that we've made and you can also see that it is hard lighting So you can see here that the light is a very small source It's not as big as the Sun this this image is being This is the Sun being diffused by clouds and then shot through a window So you have lots of diffusion happening in this in this situation and over here you have one light source That's just really close to Joseph So just a few feet away or few meters away and it's hitting his face and bouncing off and it causes a really high Contrast so this is all his his ear and his the side of his face is all in shadow His shoulder is all in shadow and then just certain parts of it are being hit by that light Now if I were standing on the other side of Joseph It might look a little bit more like Alexander over here to the left, but I'm not I'm standing behind him So it's not just the angle of light according to your subject Also your camera's angle according to your subject as well and that light and so you're kind of creating Sort of again a triangle, which is a big thing in photography You've kind of got your triangle of where is the light source and where is the camera now here you can see an example of Photographs taken just seconds apart from each other, but capturing very different angles of light So here in this picture to the right You can see that the Sun is actually in the top left corner of the photograph and it's shining down on my friend Chris We were on a hiking trip We're setting up camp He's got the tent in his hand here and you can see the light is coming from the top left of the photograph And hitting and creating what's kind of called a rim light It's hitting the edges of everything and it's it's a silhouette So it's it's kind of hitting the the edges of everything just like with Joseph in the last Example and creating a sort of silhouette and everything behind that is sort of dark And I also was exposing for this light I wasn't exposing as much for this area right down here I was exposing more for this rim light because I wanted it to stand out now Just a few seconds later I kind of followed Chris and was standing over by this rock and then I took this photograph right here and you can see Chris's dog shook is sitting right here and the light is coming now frontal It's it's now a frontal light coming from this Sun right here that you're seeing in this image But it's just coming from a different direction according to the camera So again the camera moves and that changes the way that you're interpreting that light I also changed my exposure so you can see now that instead of shooting for this rim light I'm shooting actually to expose correctly for the ground over here for example So now you can see this spot right here looks like this from a different angle with a little bit different lighting And with a different camera setting to kind of expose for that correct light And you can just see that the the look is very different here You've got high contrast you've got sort of a very different feeling than you do here where you're getting a very flat even light So that's another way of explaining Light you can also call it flat and you can call this contrasted light Or you can call this higher contrast So you can now take a look at an example of very contrasty light And this is an image that I took when I was just shooting some photographs of the food movement and in Tennessee And the light in this photograph is coming in through a window. It's a very hard Afternoon light that's just shining in it was kind of in the fall and That also plays a role on what time of year you're photographing It affects the angle of the Sun and that can then affect the kind of images that you can make during different times of the year And you can just try to imagine this image if all of this was lit evenly lit If everything was just flat there this photo would have no sort of point of interest It wouldn't necessarily have as much feeling as it does with this sun kind of coming in and shining through The chair and then sort of hitting all the bread and kind of pulling all the contrast What happens when you have an angle of light? That's this extreme is it adds depth often it doesn't always add depth But it can often add depth to the to the image and kind of give it sort of a deeper feeling and more Texture as well Texture is also a really important thing in photography. We've talked about it in other lessons But using your light source as a way of kind of bringing that texture out is a really great way to use To use your camera so to find an angle where that light is hitting it things that will kind of maximize the texture Maximize the depth and give your photograph also some feeling you want to kind of maybe think about that as well Now here you can see basically the same lighting situation in two different situations And the light is basically coming in both cases from the right But here you can see that it doesn't work as well with Mary because I was just taking a portrait of her sitting across the Coffee table from me at a restaurant But here you can see this photo of Moses it works a lot better because he's turned into the light So again the direction of your subject and the way that they're Interacting with that light source makes a very big difference Now here is an example of sort of above and maybe slightly backlighting So in this situation the light is kind of coming from pretty much straight down right here And in this other example, it's coming from almost straight above actually These two images were taken on in very different situations The one to the right was during a little rainstorm in my neighborhood I was walking down the street and I saw this this plant that has very cool leaves and the water droplets were forming on them In a very cool way, so I took a took a photograph of it and this one to the left is a hiking trip This is me just kind of seeing light hitting this one This one sort of plant that was sort of sticking out above all the rock and everything like that because of the lighting I thought oh, that's kind of interesting. So you can use light to emphasize Again, we've talked about emphasizing In some of our other court and some of our other lessons about camera angle and things like that But you really want to look at how light emphasizes something and if light is pulling if there's a if there's a big contrast between Two things you might be able to use that light to emphasize something here There's probably a difference of maybe like as many as three stops Maybe so might even be more than that of light And so in that case the thing that is most lit is going to attract your eye and it's going to draw your attention So that then emphasizes That element so think about what the light is shining on and if it's important, maybe it's worth a photograph Now here we have a situation where it's a basically a photograph that we've already seen This looks a lot like the photograph that I took of Joseph that you saw very early on in the lesson The difference is that this kind of has some similarities to something that you would see a lot in like Performance art photography where you have a really strong spot light shining on someone from very far away And then you also have a lot of fill light Which is the light that's kind of happening around them incidentally already and sort of filling in the darker spots of the photograph There's a lot of fill light in this image a little bit more than there was in the last image So you also want to think about balance when you're thinking about your light You want to think about where the lights coming from and what you can do with it and what exposure settings you want to take You want to make to make that photograph happen So here you've got a really strong light source It's creating a rim light a silhouette kind of hot highlight right there And then you've got a certain amount of fill light and you want to decide how much you want to use that and in this case I basically blew out the highlights of this photograph so that I could capture Some of the details in in this part of the photograph as well so you want to think about balancing the light as well and On the photo on the right. You're actually seeing the use of a strobe or a Flash as they're sometimes called and this one is not on the camera This one's actually separate and attached by a cable or in this case I think it's actually wireless and the flash in this case is over here according to Alex and It's somewhere around maybe like 60 degrees from the camera So it's a little bit over to the left and you can change that angle You can move that you can move the lens or you can move the the flash Around Alex or around your subject in all directions You can kind of create essentially a big circle around them and move the flash to try different things out and in this case of the flash is pretty far to His side which is actually kind of uncommon generally you might want to put your flash a little bit more from this direction right here So kind of getting more of a frontal light But I was trying out sort of a further back lighting situation that would kind of create more of a Shadow on his face. So it's a hard lighting source And it's also I've chosen an angle that kind of emphasizes sort of the curves and angles of his face So that kind of makes it for a stronger photograph in a way So just different things that you can think about you want to consider when you're using especially in strobe and flash Photography want to consider the size of your light source and the angle especially carefully So that was your lesson about angle of light and sort of quality of light or the beginnings of your quality of light Lessons will be talking more about different types of lighting in future lessons