Lighting vignettes interact with the textures of the object, and cast shadows showing how objects line up. The inverse square law of light can also help photographers show depth. Lighting vignettes are only similar to ‘regular’ vignettes in the way they make the perimeter of a photo darker. However using light goes far beyond the benefits of a post production (PP) vignette.

PP vignettes affect the image based on pixels already captured, not on the space you are photographing. PP vignettes generally bring down the brightness value of all the information around the perimeter of the photo. Depending on your methods you can add contrast and texture to the vignette, but it’s still only applying to the existing pixels.
In the same way that you can’t recreate beautiful/realistic split lighting in PP from a sunny day portrait taken at noon, you can’t recreate a lighting vignette.

Shooting with the band For the Weekend we crashed the Fall City Fall house, so we could utilize their photogenic wall space. -This was before FCF got evicted for playing loud music and being general dirt bags.

Lighting;
Key Light; shoot through umbrella a bit above the camera, to the right.
Hair Light; bare strobe top left, behind the subject, with a CTO gel. Cramped space made setting it up interesting; the strobe couldn’t drop to a low enough power, and was nuking the side of Colton’s head. Without a different strobe or neutral density in my bag I thought I was SOL. Wait… polarizers cut light, right? Perfect! I cut two stops of light from a strobe using a screw mount lens polarizing filter.
Light for Vignette; the subject is very close to the shoot thru umbrella, so before adding the 3rd light the background was quite dark –Think inverse square law-. I sat a strobe on the exposed furring strips in the ceiling (no drywall here) and zoomed it in. The zoomed in light creates a small pool of light on the wall; a vignette which interacts with, and enhances the texture of the painted brick.

To make a light vignette, use a strobe to illuminate only part of the visible area. The lit area should frame the subject, with light falling off towards edges of the image. Use either light fall off and the inverse square law, or the edge of the area a strobe is illuminating to make the light drop of closer to the edge of the frame.
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Lighting vignettes aren’t limited to portraiture, what about mountain biking with a lighting vignette? Lighting a location with depth, even more texture, and landscape makes light vignettes even more interesting and beautiful.

Key Light; cam left, high off the ground, zoomed in, bare head. The light isn’t hitting the entire frame equally; the bottom corners of the frame are outside of the strobe’s range because it’s so far zoomed in. These darker parts frame the bottom of the image, the black trees in the background make the upper portion of the light vignette.
Fill Light; cam right, bare head. Kept at a low height to avoid conflicting shadows on the ground, and keep out light vignette looking great.

This inconsistency between the human eye’s, and camera’s dynamic range can be a big problem, as a photographer won’t be able to accurately represent the scene they are provided with. However photographers can also take this shortcoming of a camera’s abilities, and turn it to their advantage.

When the world gives a photographer a lemon, what does he make? Lemonade or Lemon meringue pie?
High Dynamic Range (HDR) = lemon meringue pie; a lot more work in post production to make something palatable.
Low Dynamic Range (LDR) = lemonade; add two scoops of sugar and water to taste, with a little practice you’l find something that works for you.

HDR images can be created by taking multiple images with bracketed exposure to cover the full visible dynamic range of a scene. In post production the information from all of the images is combined to get a better representation of the original scene’s dynamic range.

To shoot LDR you need a one skill; seeing like your camera. (Throughout this series of Foveas and Photographs ‘seeing’ will be a common idea and skill to develop) Seeing in LDR won’t literally happen, you can’t override your brain’s imaging software, -at least no way I’ve been told- so seeing like your camera’s dynamic range is a skill of visualizing the end product using the information you can see.
To see in LDR go shoot and consciously pay attention to how much information your camera can capture before it begins clipping the whites or blacks, then apply that knowledge about clipping to the way you perceive scenes around you as you visualize.

A great time to start doing this is sunset; look at the objects in the foreground, then the background. With your eyes you see all of it, with detail everywhere, but as soon as you press the shutter button you immediately loose one or the other; a white sky of black foreground.

Kyle asked me if I wanted to go out and shoot some mountain biking last weekend. Shooting as the sun was going down I was faced with the challenge of the massive dynamic range between the setting sun, and the shadows creeping longer across the hill. Instead of throwing 4 flashes into the shot (don’t get me wrong, I was really tempted) I opted for natural light and shot LDR.

The first shot is shooting the shadow side of kyle as he tried to drive his handle bars into the ground (can you really get over how low that is?) the setting sun is just behind the hill (not under the horizon yet).

The second shot was taken after the sun has set, the afterglow of dusk still bright in the western sky creates a great silhouette, it is also isolating the mud thrown around like miniature bombshells

LDR is a very different technique than HDR in many ways; the process, previsualization, post production. I’d like to point out one of the most amazing parts about shooting LDR; the simplicity. When you fill the frame with solid blacks or solid whites you are clearing up the visual space, this blog is already too long to go into how amazing negative space is for composition, however great use of negative space makes great photographs.

If the information you read here follows thru to a future button push (photo) please share the story, photographs and your thoughts. Oh and yes, I do know LDR is commonly used to abbreviate long-distance-relationship.

LDR is the new black -some times literally.

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