Ogalthorpe's 4-point Lighting Process

For quite some time when talking to my friends (especially photographer friends) about transitioning into a career as a professional photographer I've often said that I want to be a photographer, not an educator.  But now I'm not so sure.

It's been pointed out to me, and I've subsequently discovered that I'm actually a fairly good educator.  And that I have some knowledge worth sharing and a way of looking at that knowledge in a fairly unique way.

So I figured the most logical place for me to start would be photographic lighting instruction. However, I first needed to figure out where I would be coming from so to speak.  In working out my particular perspective, I struck upon the following: The 4 point lighting process.

I started out asking myself the question "Why do we light?" over and over and after quite some time spent scratching my head trying to answer it, was able to write down some notes.  Here's what came to mind:

• To impart a "look" or "feel" to a particular image; to create "emotion"
• To reveal form and texture
• To augment the existing conditions
• To underscore the composition of the image (again, more "emotion")

Those were the rough notes.

One of the difficulties in doing these things is that first we must become technicians of sorts.  We need to learn the fundamentals of lighting (Lighting 101, anyone?).  Not only do we need to learn them, we need to understand them and know how to put them into practice.  That's the easy part.  I think anyone can learn the fundamentals.  After all, David Hobby built an empire on lighting instruction based around small strobes.  But I think there's a slightly more abstract position to take when it comes to lighting: The Problem Solving Process, that is, how go about thinking about lighting.

And here's what I've developed that I call the 4-point lighting process:

1) INTENT - What is the purpose of the photograph to be made?  What's our photographic goal?

2) IDENTIFICATION - What are the qualities and characteristics of the photograph you're trying to make.  What problems have to be overcome in order to achieve the intent?

3) APPLICATION - What tools are at our disposal that will help us solve the problems we've identified in order to achieve our goal?  This is where our lighting knowledge comes into play.  It's our toolbox; our bag of tricks.

4) ASSESSMENT - In examining the results of the photograph, did we achieve the intended goal?  If the answer is yes, then great everyone can home home and it's a wrap.  But if the answer is no, then we have to start back at the identification and application stages.  What did we do wrong that didn't solve the identified problems?  Sometimes we have to resort to trial and error.  Sometimes we have to ask if we thought about the problem in an appropriate manner.  This process is iterative.  You'll have to go back do some stuff over a little differently until you get it right.

So this is basically the process I try to think through when it comes to making an image.  Did you happen to notice that actual lighting knowledge didn't come into play until the third step?  Knowing your stuff is important, but knowing how it fits into the big picture is even more important.