Advice Re: Shooting Landscape Lighting
CC Photo
be used as advertising, I have a few landscaping companies as customers,
however those shots tend to always utilize early or late day sunlight and
sometimes some fill to feature plants and stone work.
I have now been tasked with featuring backyard accent lighting for a
brochure... Any tips on metering or fill flash (other than trial and error)
would be greatly appreciated.
Colin
coleir...@rogers.com
Francis A. Miniter
image will be used for advertising and the obligations of truth in
advertising have to be respected. If nothing is used to improve the
picture, the accent lighting will probably be inadequate to make the
image anything but dark and underlit. If fill flash is used, then the
image will not accurately portray the affect of the accent lighting.
Long exposures could be tried - adding time for reciprocity failure,
but images so made sometimes appear foggy.
Artistically, the best way to do it probably yields the most untruthful
image. Before dark, with the camera firmly mounted on a tripod, expose
the film at 1/2 the indicated meter setting. Leave the camera in place
and after dark turn on the lights. Expose the same negative properly
for the lights. The image should be very nice. A good example of this
technique is given on pages 68-69 of Meehan, "The Photographer's Guide
to Using Filters" (Amphoto 1992). By the way, for the night time
image, if would be good to measure the light temperature of the accent
lighting and use a color compensating filter (the Wratten 80, 81, 82 or
85 series or self made with CC Yellow, Magenta and Cyan filters - see
pages 64-65 of the aforementioned book).
Francis A. Miniter
Ken Hart
"CC Photo" <coleir...@rogers.com> wrote in message
news:HioQa.24124$lJd1....@news01.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com...
Here's a somewhat off-the-wall idea: depending on the type of lighting
fixture, you may be able to find a flashbulb that will fit. (For the common
lighting systems at the local home center, an AG-1 bulb shold work. You
would have to be able to cut the power to the lighting fixtures) You could
set up a time exposure after dark, then turn on the lighting and fire all
the flashbulbs.
Ken Hart
zeitgeist
first, shoot at late twilight, when there is still a bit of 'fill' for the
garden or lawn in general and the landscape lights can be one stop or so
brighter. You maybe lucky to hit on a time when the balance of the two is
just right, you basically want to underexpose the lawn and garden areas
cause it is supposed to be night but you still need some detail.
You might want to consider separate exposures for the lights themselves, as
in do the first technique, then wait till very dark to shoot to just expose
the light fixtures' glow which would render the surround as black if that
was the only exposure, then overlay the two images in photoshop. this will
show the lawn as shadowy but with enough detail, the area near the lights as
being invitingly glowing yet the light fixtures will have some sense of
detail without being blown out.
another level would be to paint with light, you do step one, get the late
twilight of the area down on film, then you get the light glow, then you
make everything dark and with a flash light hit the individual fixtures for
a few seconds which will put some light on the shape and perhaps the texture
of them. this might not be necessary as the fixtures should be
what old timers with big old 8x10 cameras would do is to hang internal
mattes, in fact thats how the film based version of movie special effects
got the name matte box effects, but you could hang inside a camera bellows
something to block the light at specific areas, it would be tricky as hell,
lots of trial and error. by hanging dime sized dots at just the right areas
you would in effect dodge them during the exposure
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