lighting: point of view

This is the second part of playing around with the direction of light for the Strobist Lighting102 exercise 1. Nothing particularly dramatic going on here - the first shot has the light at about 45 degrees to the subject, on the camera right. The second shot is taken just over the light. The real lesson here is that once you start looking at the subject from where the light is, you can see what will be lit or not. This might seem straight forward but it is pretty fundamental, particularly when working with strobes that you can't see the light until they trigger. So what you can see from the point of view of the light is what will be lit. Notice in particular in the shot on the left, the side of Stan's face is in shadow and in the second shot, you can't see the side of his face or hat. Using this knowledge, you can set up lights and know exactly where the direct light will fall - just look from the point of view of the light. As Stan would say I've really learned something today.