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A Light Challenge.

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A recent challenge presented to us here in the studio was to photograph a seal (wax not Pinniped!). This type of 3D object always presents a challenge as they are difficult to light evenly and correctly. Due to the uneven and reflective surface of 3D objects like the seal, light will create bleached highlights on the high points of the object and the high points will also cast shadow. You can’t place a  light source directly above the object either as the light will bounce straight back into the camera. If you lower the output of the light source to try and eliminate the highlights you will underexpose the image. So if the normal direct studio lighting doesn’t work, what can we do? Well, the answer is a technique called axial lighting.

Axial_Lighting_004

Axial lighting is achieved by shining light (diffused fluorescent) at a piece of glass that sits above the object and is angled at 45 degrees towards the object. The angled glass deflects the light directly downwards on to the object and provides us with down-light, but as its deflected light we don’t get glare from the actual light source.

Directly opposite the light source we place a sheet of black card to absorb the light which prevents light reflecting back onto the object and between the light source and object we also place an item larger than the object to again stop direct light reaching the object.

For the cameras part it simply focuses through the glass and can only see the evenly lit object. The first image shows the highlights created by direct lighting. The second image shows the difference when using axial lighting.

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