From the course: Pro Video Tips

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Introduction to backlight

Introduction to backlight

From the course: Pro Video Tips

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Introduction to backlight

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One of my favorite types of light to work with is backlight. You may be more familiar with it as a hair light, but it's also known as a kicker or rim light. These are all different names for slight variations of a light that illuminates a subject from behind. Rather than the more common frontal placement for lights on our subject. The primary and most important use of back lighting is to help separate your subject from the background by giving them a nice well defined edge of light that helps to visually carve them out from the scene behind them. Kind of like adding a line or stroke to a picture for an illustration. Traditional photography and video advice has always recommend that you generally keep your back to the sun or main light source so the light can fall on the subject's face. And, that's generally good advice for amateur image makers. However, backlighting completely throws that novice rule out of a sunlit window. One of the things that comes with experience is learning how…

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