Hot and Cold Lighting

We all know that tungsten light is a warmer light (think regular light bulbs) and fluorescents and flash produce cooler lighting. While it makes sense, until I read an article by Peter Kolonia in Popular Photography, I have never thought of combining warm and cool light to produce different effects in a photograph. Since I’ve not tried this yet, I don’t have any sample pictures, but they should be viewable over at www.popphoto.com so stop over there to see samples in action.

Basically, the article says that by lighting your subject with one tone and the background with another, you can produce some really interesting results. For simplicity purposes, here’s a chart of what combinations produce what types of results:

Subject Light

Background Light

White Balance

Results

Tungsten lights (like a lamp)

Flash or cool window light

Tungsten

Electric Blue Background

Cool daylight or Flash

Tungsten lights (like a lamp)

Daylight

Orange Glow

Tungsten (like a lamp)

Tungsten (like a lamp)

Auto

White (or grey1)

All light

No light

Auto

Black

1For a high key (all white) effect on the background, throw more light on the background. The more light you direct to the background, the brighter the resulting background will be for your photos. Conversely, as background lights get dimmer, the background itself will be more of a gray.

Just a few reminders Peter gives us:

Use a large space so foreground light won’t spoil the background light

  • Experiment with exposure to get the right glow from the background (typically longer speeds thus necessitating a tripod)
  • Using an old-fashioned fluorescent light can result in the “grunge” look of cross-processed photos

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