Light - the most basic of all things natural, yet somehow it seems to mystify so many imaging professionals. Think about it: everything you see and every item you touch is a three-dimensional, physical "thing." And that "thing" reflects back light so your eye can see it. That is the key to lighting: understanding that "items reflect back light" and your job as an imaging professional is to capture "light."
In the process of capturing light, you can choose to struggle with it, give up and just get the footage; put a couple of lights up and just get the footage; or you can allow that physical thing and how it reflects light to inspire you - to shape your ideas about lighting. It matters not whether your light is from the sun, an artificial source or a mixture of both. It is your job to work with light, to shape it, to fit each lighting situation to your needs, to take advantage of it and make your imagery the best it can be.
It all starts with learning how to "see" light and recognize how light reacts with various subjects and how your camera reacts with light. Just as a painter carefully applies his paint to the canvas, a photographer or videographer applies light to his set.
Think back to those times when you woke up to a beautiful spring morning with sunlight dappled through the fresh leaves and the dew on the ground delicately lit by the sunlight skimming across the surface. Or how about that gorgeous atrium in the front entrance of some office or shopping complex you last visited? Remember that beautiful lighting, where everything was just so wonderful and clearly defined? You
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As I've said so many times before, controlling light is the secret of all types of photography, whether still or moving.
