From the course: Photography Foundations: Flash

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Key light

Key light

From the course: Photography Foundations: Flash

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Key light

- In the last movie you were introduced to the idea of roles. When you think about your lighting chores in terms of roles everything gets much easier. Often the best place to start in figuring out a lighting plan is to work out what your key light will be. Right now, there's one light on in this room and it's pointed at the wall back there. So there's no light on me at all. I need a key light, so we're going to turn on a light to serve that role right now. Aha! Now we're getting somewhere. In this case, our key light is a single light shining down from up there. What kind of light it is, how it's powered, how it's configured, that's irrelevant to your understanding of the lighting in this scene. All you need to notice is that the single light is serving as a key light. A key light is the main source of illumination on your subject. If you're shooting a landscape, the key light is usually the sun, but on a cloudy day the key light might be a break in the clouds that allows one area of…

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