Aug 23, 2011

Lighting Challenge Part 1

I FINALLY got to the lighting part of my lighting challenge.

Entering into this task, I had a fantastic head start due to advise I have been receiving. I just wanted to say thank you again to the talented and supportive people taking their time to help me out!

Though David Maas has gone five steps above and beyond with this full reworking of my composition to produce a very easy to follow visual lighting guide!

This is how far I got today. It still needs work, but thanks to David I didn't have as much stabbing in the dark to do.

I've only really started on lighting the Gorgosaurus. It is a nice start (especially compared to the "flat" version of yesterday, below). I have a lot to do still...

The biggest issue is the Styracosaurs are now too camouflaged. The plants are too black and their detail is obscured is the last issue.

Still once more it is a huge improvement over this!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looking better Craig!

Another thing to think about is your composition.
While nature is full of clutter when you produce an illustration be mindful of how the clutter affects your subjects.
Lots of detail attracts the eye and so your viewer can become confused about the focus of your image.
All the little bits of foliage compete with your main subject, so use them artfully.

traumador said...

Cheers,

Yeah I was thinking about that composition issue. In the future I will probably manually construct the foreground layer of plants, and automate the latter layers.

I just got over enthusiastic, and sort of wanted to emulate a nature photograph (as animals never pose in a nice space in my experience).

Anonymous said...

You'd be surprised to see how much hard work/luck goes into nicely composed nature photos!
It is easy to get carried away though, just remember the where you want the viewer to look.

traumador said...

Yeah, I've had the odd bit of luck in bird photography (from hard work stalking... but I have seen the REALLY hard work pros goto).

As an aside on nature photography, the larger the zoom the better in my opinion. My Kookaburra photos have been progressively improving as my cameras got better and bigger throughout my trips to Aus.

I do look forward to constructively engineering my own nature settings once I get a better handle on lighting them!