"AVAILABLE" Light

Cove lighting down to the floor in one of the museum's corners to highlight the texture of this feature wall made for a nice background - and lighting, of course.  The pose was Leah's idea.

Common knowledge tells us that available light is synonymous to ambient light.  While ambient light is beautiful, it is not always perfect and for this reason I chose to redefine the meaning of "available" light.  To me it is whatever light is at your disposal - including speedlites in my hands.

The same walls and lighting as above.  This pose was my idea.

But using speedlites is another topic in itself.  What we are going to discuss here is using other artificial light source.  Architectural lights are the best ones because they are primarily designed like snooted strobes creating tiny pools of light to illuminate certain architectural features and avoiding what does not need illumination.

Floor lights shining up to the ceiling to highlight the 2 steel screen mesh.

Earlier this year, I visited the Museum of Islamic Arts whose architect was I. M. Pei, with a couple of friends - one of them is my regular model, Leah.  And while the museum and it's collection was impressive and enjoyable enough, we also enjoyed the beautifully designed interior and lighting.  Aside from being an architect, I am also a photographer and it didn't took long for me to get some ideas on how to use the interior lighting for taking pictures.  Fortunately for us, there were not too many visitors and photography is allowed inside.

This was taken in the museum's lobby close to the entrance.  The light source was an external building light shining through the glass door.  The glass imperfection and dirt created the textured pattern on the marble walls.

The photos feature here are some of those we've taken during that visit.  Each one has a description of what architectural light was used.  (Heh - the advantage of being an architect!)

The same external building light as above.  This time, I used it as a kicker light to create a separation between her and the background.  The main light was an on-camera Canon Speedlite 580EX II.

Cheers,

alexdpx