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Old October 4th 03, 10:13 AM
Lewis Lang
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Default B&W kids portrait

Subject: B&W kids portrait
From: (Michael Scarpitti)
Date: Tue, Sep 23, 2003 8:52 PM
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J C wrote in message

...
On 22 Sep 2003 19:15:27 -0700,
(Michael
Scarpitti) wrote:


Not absolute rules, but the human brain is programmed to see a single
shadow from a single light sourse: the sun. It's inherently
unflattering to see mutiple light sources that cast multiple shadows
of near-equal strength on faces, and that's what I don't like here.

Almost all Renaissance and later portraiture uses light coming from
the subject's right (viewer's left). It has its origins in the
left-to-right writing sytem used in the West since Greek times.


Knowing something about the human brain and cognition, I'd have to say
that the first paragraph above is probably wrong. I doubt that all the
millions of years of evolution would lead to any such "programming" of
the brain to prefer light from one direction over another --
particularly since most of that evolution happened in the absence of
art and writing.


But if we evolved on a planet with two or three suns, it would seem
more natural to us, no?


Which brings up a tangential but related subject, catchlights in the eyes.
Common wisdom says only one catchlight for each eye since we have only one sun.
But we also have windows and water and mirrors and chrome from cars/etc. that
reflect that sun so it seems more logical to me to have as many catchlights as
one wants _provided_ it works with the overall subject and mood of the
photograph. This is especially true for studio fashion photography where it is
obvious that the subject was photographed in a studio (seemless paper in the
background may give it away as a studio ;-)) in which, to me anyway, it would
seem more "natural" to allow each eaye to have as many catchlights as there are
lights being used w/i range/angle of incidence on the subject in the studio -
only changing though amount/type of lights used or later in Photoshop how many
catchlights (reflections of the light source) appear in each eye. This is not
to say that if there was a cafe set in a studio in which the subject sits next
to a mock window (let's say to set a romantic mood or sense of place, ie. a
cafe) that using a rectangular vertical soft box to get a fake'/faux window
light reflection in that person's eyes wouldn't be a good move.

Speaking of moving, whether catchlights or lighting direction, convention(s)
should only be used when it fits the subject/mood of the photograph and
virtually never for their own sake lest you want to emulate a past/conventional
style of lighting for some odd (or even ;-)) reason.

Regards,

Lewis

Check out my photos at "LEWISVISION":

http://members.aol.com/Lewisvisn/home.htm

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