You can’t just turn off all the lights and expect to record a night scene.
Recently, Leigh Reeves, an editor who lives in Melbourne, Australia, sent me some lovely night-time photos of the Yarra River which flows through downtown Melbourne. As I looked at them, I was struck by the fact that the night is not dark!
And this is relevant to the work that we do in video. It isn’t a question of turning lights off, it’s a question of where we put them.
The Yarra River, Melbourne, Australia, at night. (Photo courtesy: Leigh Reeves.)
In this photo, there is no question it was shot at night. The sky and river are both dark. And, yet, they aren’t dark at all.
When we look at the scopes, the image is flooded with midtones, highlights and color!
The Yarra River, Melbourne, Australia, at dusk. (Photo courtesy: Leigh Reeves.)
Or, here, evening is setting in.
But, again looking at the scopes. The image contains a wealth of shadows, mid-tones and highlights.
The night is not dark.
WHAT’S MY POINT
My point is that we don’t create dark by turning off the lights, or reducing highlights, or adding blue. We create dark by reducing the fill light and increasing the contrast between highlights and shadows, as this chroma-key shot with Lisa illustrates. By making the environment darker we increase the importance of highlights – and, at the same time, limit their scope.
Besides, this gave me an opportunity to share two very pretty photos.
2 Responses to The Night is Not Dark – And Other Misconceptions
Larry,
Thanks for all your wise words.
Apropos of something similar, I read a short story by the late Austrian author Stefan Zweig yesterday and was struck by this description:
‘The evening slowly entered the room, and she did not feel it. For evening comes quietly. It does not look boldly through the window like mid-day, it seeps from the walls like dark water, raises the ceiling into a void, brings everything floating down into its soundless torrent’.
‘Like dark water’… amazing. Now all we have to do is light it!
Bob
Bob:
Yeah, well, lighting always was the tricky part.
Larry