3 Basic Techniques For Lighting Anything

Director/Cinematographer Matthew Rosen has put a cracking lighting tutorial together that shows you three methods for lighting just about anything, including tricky and highly reflective subjects such as mirrors.

The tutorial is really easy to understand and focuses on three lighting methods for lighting three types of 'surface': reflective, transparent and neutral (anything that's not reflective or transparent). 

For transparent and reflective objects, such as glassware, you can't light them directly as they don't react to ambient light the same way a neutral subject (chair, tree, person etc.) does. Instead, you have to use reflective light and in the video Matthew demonstrates this with a glass bottle which he illuminates the background of rather than shining the two lights he is using to highlight the bottle directly. 

Basically, you just need to remember that neutral subjects can be lit well with ambient light, reflective subjects need reflective light and transparent subjects also need to be lit with reflective light but you need to make sure you've lit whatever's behind your subject so the light shines directly through it.

Of course, there are times when you'll need to mix these lighting set-ups together but by learning the basics, you'll learn the art in no-time. 

For more product photography tips, have a look at our photography techniques section. 

(Via ISO1200)