Catching Light
Each equine photo shoot presents it's own unique challenges and capturing details on a black horse can be especially tricky. Without the right lighting conditions, a black horse, especially a "true black" can become nothing more than a featureless silhouette! This is where manipulating light comes into play in a big way! For this particular session, we had enough sunlight to try for some fun details on the head shots of this Arabian gelding, Jet. For the majority of the shots, this reflector was much further back, but Jet's curiosity about the reflector gave me couple of great pictures to demonstrate how bouncing ambient light—if you have it— can dramatically change an image!
The catch light is vital to producing a realistic image of any eye. What is a catch light? A catchlight is the light reflected in a subject's eye, the glimmer that comes from an external light source. Also known as an "eye light," it's the highlight reflected off the surface of the eye. It is possible to add catch light to a photo using photoshop afterwards, but in my opinion having the lens capture it, produces a superior result.
The two examples below show how reflected light can be "bounced". In this case, specifically to help create shape and dimension of Jet's eye—without having to create it in post editing with Photoshop!
The content first posted 9/2018
