Public Forums > Photography > Lighting

I am sure that most photographers would agree that lighting is everything!

As I have been doing a lot of head shots (beauty) lately and also close ups of cosmetics, I have found it hard to do all my work in the few hours of daylight - I like in Britain and it gets dark and gloomy fairly early on!  rather than having to drag out my full set of studio lights, I have found that a daylight lamp - just using a GE Reveal daylight bulb with a standard cheap lamp would do - made for crafters is a great alternative for when the days just get too dark.  Indoor lights are often far too yellow.  It can be adjusted easily in photoshop, but when dealing with a lot of images, I like to be able shoot without worrying about how many hours I will then spend in Photoshop!

I much prefer natural lighting, so outdoors always works really well for me plus it's easy to get some really awesome locations. For shots indoors obviously it depends on the shot and the style but for headshots I love using a spotlight or a ring flash. With a ring flash I know a lot of photographers don't edit out the reflection of the flash in a subjects pupil. I'm not sure I like this. The best bit of photography for me is the editing stage, it's so hard to get an image perfect on first go.

Hey again

It can be hard I agree.  Once you get things fine tuned though it saves you many hours on Photoshop!  In the past I used to think I'd just edit things accordingly, but something like a lipstick smudge can take hours to edit properly on Photoshop - I always think, why didn't I just get the model to wipe it at the time?!!