Studio lighting consists of 2 main categories. Continuous and Flashlight. Continuous is light that’s on all the time never flashing. These types of studio lights are similar to a house lamp. Turn the switch on and the light comes on. Turn it off and the light goes off.
Flashlight light is a sudden bright artificial light used when taking photographic pictures. They have umbrellas, or a softbox can be attached to diffuse the light.
Other objects and tools you can use are reflectors. A reflector is a photography tool used to redirect light to a subject or scene. It doesn’t create light; rather, it redirects light that is already there.
Key ideas that photographers will look for when taking photos are:
Intensity of the light: Light intensity influences a photo’s overall tonality.
Direction of the light: Frontal, Side and Backlighting. The three directions have a different effect on how three-dimensional your subject appears to be due to the that shadows are cast.
Temperature of the light (and white balance on the camera): Auto white balance is available in all digital cameras and uses a best guess algorithm within a limited range — usually between 3000/4000 K and 7000 K. Custom white balance allows you to take a picture of a known grey reference under the same lighting, and then set that as the white balance for future photos.
Hard light is harsh and creates strong shadows, while soft light is more diffused and creates softer shadows. Photographers would use hard light to create dramatic effect with lots of contrast. It’s more natural-looking and makes your subject appear warm, welcoming, and friendly. A lot of wedding pictures would use soft light!
High Key: Very important when taking photos because High Key is a style of photography that uses unusually bright lighting to reduce or completely blow out dark shadows in the image. Upbeat and positive photos are made from using high key.
Low Key: Low-key lighting has greater contrast between the dark and light areas of the image with a majority of the scene in shadow.