Lets talk lighting

Lighting is one of the main points of photography that can transform the quality of your work and can push you from amateur to professional. At the start of my degree one of the first things you learn about is lighting techniques and how different objects need different lighting. By changing the lighting, you can completely change the overall appearance of an image whilst keeping the contents the same.  

With lighting it is always important to know what you are trying to achieve. With E-commerce work, the goal is often to have a very technically accurate piece of work, whereas if your goal is more aesthetic or edgy you can use lighting in a whole different way to create a dynamic and interesting piece. A simple way of adding extra colour into your imagery is by adding a gel to one of the lights.

My biggest piece of advice for understanding lighting and getting to grips with different lighting techniques is to use YouTube. Follow some lighting technique videos and set it up yourself, if you really like it you can write it down and use it again for future shoot and you will start to create your own book of lighting techniques that you know you can achieve. You can experiment with your own lighting set ups and write them down too.

When taking lighting out on location you need to consider what facilities you have, the time of day, what you want to achieve, etc. If you are out in the middle of nowhere it is unlikely that you will have a socket to plug in your lighting kit, so for this a battery-operated kit would be beneficial. If you are going out at sunset, is that orangey golden tone the thing you want to achieve? These are all things to think about in advance and planning is always key.