Ever since I started photography I had a thing for lighting. Nowadays, every time I see a picture, I can’t help it but to analyze and breakdown how it was lit. In this article I will share my analyzing process, step by step.
I believe understanding light can make a huge improvement to any photographer’s work, and practicing light-analysis is definitely one of the better ways to do it. When was just starting out, analyzing light on Flickr photos I love was a huge learning experience for me.
There are plenty of way (or tricks) to analyze light, this is how I do it, feel free to share yours too.
The first thing I do is break down the lighting into 4 hint-groups: Catchlights, Shadows, Highlights, and Background lights.
Catchlights
The first thing I look at when looking at a photo are the catchlights. This is probably the easiest/fastest way to see light. Look for a gleam of reflected light in the eye. You can almost always tell the position of the light is when looking at catchlights and sometimes you can also tell what light was used.
Looking at catchlights can also hint if the photographer used one light, two lights or more. Or if they used a fill light.
In this shot, you can see that the mainlight was a beauty dish above the subject and he used a fill light(illustration board) below the subject
Shadows
There are times where the catchlight are too small / retouched / totally absent, so the next things to look for are shadows under the nose and chin and other parts of the body.
One of the easier things is to check where the shadows are pointing – the main light is probably just opposite to it.
You can also check the background for shadows of the subject which will hint on where lights are coming from.
In this photo, the photographer is using only one light.
Highlights
With the highlights I break it down into three parts, the first is I check is the key light. I do this by looking at the highlights in the front of the face and parts of the body.
From the highlights in the face and shoulder of the subject we can see that the mainlight is coming from above the subject
Kickerlights – the next thing I look out for in a photo is the kicker light which is normally the highlight parts in the side of the subject.
Hairlight – One thing to also look out for is the hairlight
Besides the kicker light, photographers also put a separate light for the hair light
Background light
The last thing I check is the background light or other lights that are part of the photo but not directly hitting the subject.
A blue gel was used for the background light. Also notice the spot effect on background, so the light had a snoot or a diffuser to make the light gradient.
You don’t always see the background light. Look at this phot for examples. The background is completly washed because of lights pointing at the back
Some lights are strategically placed for effect those may not even show on the subject. Try and look for those as well.
For the mainlight, a softbox was used left of the camera, you can see this by looking at the catchlights and shadows in the nose of the subject. A kicker light was placed at the back right of the subject and a red gel was pointing at the background.
I also use this technique when looking at still life or product shots.
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