Photography studio lighting

What is the course about?

Learn about photographic studio practice and lighting within this course.
An introduction to the use of studio flash, tungsten, fluorescent & LED lighting to enhance your photography of portraits and still life objects. This is an extremely practical course - you will work in small groups with a set of studio lights to create portraits of each other and still life images.

What will we cover?

- Advantages and disadvantages of lighting
- Exposure
- Backgrounds
- Flash, tungsten, fluorescent & LED lighting
- Light shapers, contrast control and reflectors
- Portraiture
- Still life (object) photography
- Controlling the colour of light and controlling the colour of your images
- Mixing studio flash and daylight to control background exposure and image contrast.

What will I achieve?
By the end of this course you should be able to...

- Use a hand held light meter
- Begin to use some of the creative possibilities that control of light allows
- Control the level of contrast desired by the use of lights, reflectors and light shapers.
- Use both “soft” and “hard” lighting
- Analyse images, recognise how they are lit and begin the journey of developing a style of lighting in your own practice.
- Create high quality portraits
- Photograph still life objects lit by flash, tungsten and “cold” lighting
- Use tethered capture (capturing digital images directly to a computer)
- Begin to mix different sources of light together. eg daylight and flash.

What level is the course and do I need any particular skills?

This intensive course is for beginners in photographic studio practice and lighting but you will be shooting using the manual settings of your camera. A refresher will be provided in the use of the camera settings but it is not designed for beginners in photography.

You should be able to follow written and verbal instructions, hand-outs and health and safety information and will be invited to take part in group discussion.

How will I be taught, and will there be any work outside the class?

You will be taught with demonstrations, short lectures, image reviews, handouts and small group practical exercises, during which you will receive individual and group support. Please note the City Lit uses Apple Mac computers in the Photography department.
The course also uses Google Classroom (an online teaching resource) for you to share comments with your class, download course material and upload images for group crits. Google classroom login help.

Are there any other costs? Is there anything I need to bring?

Please bring your camera (if you have one) to the classes and you may wish to bring a notebook and pen. You will also probably wish to bring in objects to photograph and possibly your own backgrounds. The City Lit has a range of Digital SLR cameras, tripods and lenses which you are welcome to use during the hours of the class. It would be useful to bring a memory stick (or portable hard drive – please note: PC formatted hard drives can be read by Apple mac computers, but not written to.)

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When I've finished, what course can I do next?

The City lit has a vast range of practical and theoretical photography courses.
You can download a PDF of all the Photography courses on offer at: http://www.citylit.ac.uk/courses/Photography, search on the web site or request a printed prospectus from the City Lit home page.