Lighting Black Folks

J

JWinter

Well-known member
any tips on Lighting Black Folks for well lit subject without blown out BG?

just use more, wider iris?

any tips would help
 
this make alot of sense....

"If I am lighting a black person, I'm not going to change the light, I'm not going to bring it in any closer. I'm not going to open up an extra f-stop.

"The only thing I'm going to do is use the light coming from the side and around the subject. What we need to do when we're photographing a black person is to bring an extra light in from a 90-degree angle."
 
other good suggestions


Barry_Green
02-10-2005, 06:33 PM
Well... yeah, depending on what color you're talking about. If they have rich deep ebony skin, it's a little different to light them than, say, olive or light brown. The darker the skin, the more it'll soak up light. So you need to use really large soft sources on darker-skinned subjects, and get them close. That way you almost are filming the reflection of the light surface. You need to use large soft sources to shape the face.

Keep in mind that a true black surface would absorb all light thrown at it. Now, "black" people aren't "black" of course, but the principle holds: the darker the skin, the more it will soak up whatever light you throw at 'em. Using a large soft source will be the key to getting flattering lighting for darker-skinned faces.


Rush
02-10-2005, 07:39 PM
I agree with Barry, that with dark skin you have to use large sources because you have to make large diffuse highlights that cover and entire side of the face, as opposed to specular highlights that reflect a small bulb. I will add that there aren't as many things to consider in a Medium shot as there are when mixing folks with different skin tones in the same two-shot. :) That is when you have to add light to one person or subtract from the other to balance them. On an individual basis, you mostly have to pay attention to skin reflectivity and bone structure, as you would any subject, so that you are helping the subject and drawing attention to his or her striking features.

You have to also pay attention to the background, if you are used to lighting lighter-skin folks you may be used to using darker backrounds, and then you go to light a darker-skin person, you have to alter the background so that the person's face doesn't blend in, so you would use something lighter. This is not set in stone, it has a lot to do with exposure on the main subject as well as lighting direction and makeup. Steely blue rim lights and Orange fill lights (like the practicals) work nicely too. I would watch movies with actors that have the same skin color as your subject, and try to see how a DP treats the main subject to make her look her best. Everyone wants to look great, even in moody situations like your shoot. :) Personally I think Blade is a great example, where it borders on idol-worship-lighting for Wesley Snipes. ;D I don't think he had ever looked as good, and I think it's because the DP really studied his face and bone structure.
 
I have heard people mention a chocolate or tobacco gel to enhance their skin tone. I don't know much about these gels from personal experience though. I just have to wonder, how much of a nightmare it would be to have a super dark skinned person, and an ultra pale whitebread in the same shot.
 
Capt Quirk said:
I have heard people mention a chocolate or tobacco gel to enhance their skin tone. I don't know much about these gels from personal experience though. I just have to wonder, how much of a nightmare it would be to have a super dark skinned person, and an ultra pale whitebread in the same shot.
Click to expand...

I'm working on a feature now and I had to light a wide night exterior 300 feet from power with two 20 amp circuits, each of which could draw barely anything with the long cables so I was left with about 2000w of light total. I had only tungsten sources and needed to tint the "moonlight" blue against orange tinted flames, which provided no real light. I had to light a two shot of one of the palest and one of the darkest people I've ever seen. Needless to say: worst footage I've ever shot. It was horrible and I honestly hope the scene gets cut.

On later scenes, I took a cue from Panic Room, where Forest Whitaker was lit with an additional pale blue kinoflo held right against the side of his face, which provided the necessary speculars to get a better looking image despite the kinoflo being dimmed down next to nothing. I used compact fluorescents but with the same technique. From what I gather, cooler color temperatures and larger sources help, also if your actor is sweaty that helps.
 
I find straws and cto work well to highlight dark skin. It is important to consider every inch of the scene you are lighting, folks with dark skin require more light then lighter skin(duh), what I see too often is that people tend to blow the clothing out when lighting someone with dark skin. Be sure you bring the lighting on the skin value up to a point that detail won't be lost on the skin or that the rest of the set is not blown out. I recently light a black person in a white shower, we used a lot of flags to control the amount of light hitting the white surface. The entire lgiht setup was bounce, every lgiht was shot into a bounce board. It was acceptable, but not earthshattering. Another thing to watch for especially on a close up is the eyelight. Dark eys will look dead and lifeless with out it.

G
 
The real problem is, the skin tone can be real dark, but just a little sweat and you will have a highlight that can blow out easy. You have to watch that too, and use make up.
 
A helpful topic; where can I find more?

A helpful topic; where can I find more?

I may soon be shooting a group of African-American gospel singers. so whatever I learn will be helpful.

A colleague often suggests adjusting knee and toe to get good skin tones of anyone with a dark complexion. That hasn't been addressed in this thread. Is my colleague wrong, or would tips/help on that be found in a forum other than "Lighting"?

Thanks,
x
 
The knee is used to extend the detail in the bright areas before they are blown out. While that might help you maintain detail it is not going to help you with the amount of contrast that is in the scene. contrast as well as brightness is what tends to draw the eye and the attention of the viewer. If you have bright clothing on dark skin for example the viewers attention could very well be drawn to that point of contrast and miss the facial expressions that tell the story. It is much better to control your lighting so the contrast is not so great then it is to just have detail in the bright clothing.
 
Do you have a product name or link for these straws? I know a little about the design principle behind them, but have never actually seen one.
 
Its just straw colored gels. You can get them at the same place you get all the other gels. Straw is to convert to tungsten color with more yellow though than anything else. It's also known as CTS (color temperature straw) gel.
 
Oh, I guess I don't know what I thought I knew. I had heard of people taking a box of drinking straws, and putting them in front of the light. This keeps the light from spreading, and I thought the above mentioned straw was a produced lighting tool.
 
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