Light — Science & Magic, 6th Edition

CHAPTER 3

The Management of

Reflection and the Family

of Angles

In the previous chapter we looked at light and how it behaves. We learned

that the three most important qualities of any light source are its brightness,

color, and contrast. We also learned that the subject, not just the light, has

a major inuence on lighting. A subject can transmit, absorb, or reect the

light that strikes it.

Of the three ways the subject can aect the lighting, reection is the most

visible. Highly transparent subjects have minimal eect on light, so they

tend to be invisible. Highly absorbent subjects may also be invisible because

they convert light into other forms of energy, such as heat, which we cannot

see.

Photographic lighting, therefore, is primarily ...