Lesson video

Hello everybody! And welcome back to a second lesson on photography.

Thank you so much for coming back.

I hope you're going to enjoy what we've got in store for you today.

Now in today's lesson, we're going to be focusing on one particular part of photography, a really, really important part.

And that's all about light.

By the end of this lesson, I'm sure you'll understand why light is a photographer's best friend, BFF.

So let's get started.

Okay.

So before we start, you're going to need the following things.

You're going to get your sketch book and pencil from last week, so hopefully you've kept it safe.

You might have a bought sketchbook or bits of paper you've got to compile together at the end, either is completely fine.

And you're going to need a camera or a device that has a camera on it.

And remember, please make sure you've got permission to use it if it doesn't belong to you.

So press pause if you need to, go and grab what you need and come back and we'll get started.

So we'll spend some time recapping what we did already last week.

Then we're going to do a warm up on photography.

Then we'll spend some time exploring different types of light.

Then we're going to do a really interesting activity where we're going to be capturing light.

And we're going to spend some time investigating light.

And then we'll recover what we've learned.

So we've got lots to get through, but it's going to be super fun.

Okay, so some key words and key language that we're going to come across today are; natural, the word, natural; existing in nature, doesn't come from humans.

Artificial; made or produced by humans, not natural.

And illuminate, illuminate to make something bright by shining light on it, to light something up.

Okay.

Okay, I'm going to ask you a question now to see how much you remember from last week's lesson.

So here we go.

So cameras, cameras have a viewfinder, a photograph, a flash, or a lens.

Have you figured out which of these do cameras have? It might be more than one.

Have you got it? There we go.

Cameras have a viewfinder, yes they do, what we look through.

They have a flash, that thing that goes off to add light into the room, into the space.

And they have a lens.

That lovely thing that draws light in.

They don't have a photograph because they take photographs.

Did you get that right? Well done you.

Let's do one more.

On some cameras, it is possible to zoom; true or false? It's true.

Remember on my Polaroid, it isn't possible to zoom, but on most of the cameras, like my smartphone, it is.

There we go.

Okay, we're going to take a moment now to talk about different types of light.

Now, there are two different types of lights.

And maybe if you look at these images you can work out already what those two different types of light are.

The first type of light is natural light.

When we talk about natural light, we are mainly talking about the sun.

Okay? And the second type of light is what we call artificial light, which is anything manmade.

And I'm sure you could think of a bunch of things right now.

Basically light bulbs and lights, fairy lights, all those kinds of things are all manmade.

So just a quick question.

What type of light is the sun? Is it natural light or is it artificial light? It's natural light, well done.

Well done, anything natural is usually what comes from the sun.

Now photographers, they use both natural and artificial light when they are photographic things, when they're capturing images.

How to think now what might be the benefit of using artificial and manmade light and some examples on the screen there you might've seen these before in your life or on, on movies or things.

What would be the benefit of using an artificial light? Press pause if you need some thinking time and then come back.

Well, the main benefit is probably that you can control the artificial light in a way that we can't control the sun.

I'm sure we've all experienced wanting to maybe go out and do something, you look out of the window and it's not a sunny, beautiful day like you wanted, it's raining it's grey, it's miserable, it's windy.

And we can't really control the weather, and sometimes we can't control the light, but we can control artificial lights.

And that's why photographers do, do often use those.

So here's a little, little game for you.

So this is a room scan.

So have a look at the room that you're in right now.

How many different artificial lights can you find just in that room? Press pause, then come back.

Welcome back! How many did you get? I bet you've got loads did you.

There's so many when you start looking.

I've put up just a few examples of different things that I found in my room.

Maybe your smartphone or your watch could be computer screen, this computer screen, maybe some games, toys, the remote control, your clocks, microwave clock, depending on what room you're in.

Hopefully you've found loads.

And it's amazing when you think just how much artificial light there is around us.

We've got kind of one natural light source, the sun, which is there every day.

And in our rooms we've got so many different sources of artificial light.

Okay, so let's start with a lovely warm up just to get our photography juices flowing.

So what we're going to do, we're going to go to a window and we're going to take a selfie.

Okay? So the brighter the window, the better.

Take two selfies.

The first selfie, take it with your face facing towards the window.

And the second one, take it with your back facing towards the window.

Have a look at the two pictures.

What do you notice? And we're going to record some ideas in sketchbooks.

So go and do that then come back and we'll have a little chat about it.

See you soon.

See you soon.

Hey, window selfies! So now you've got those two images, have a look at them.

What do you notice? Which photograph do you prefer and why? And the question I'm most particularly interested in is how did light facing the window and facing away from the window? How did the light impact those two photographs? Let me show you mine.

And then we can record some ideas in our sketchbooks.

So this is mine.

And I have like, windows that wrap around that's why you can see one in the background, but I am actually facing the window in this photograph.

And the light, if you can see has fallen onto my face and it's kind of covering just one half.

Where the light is falling, can you see the difference in the part that is in the light and the part that's not in the light? And I think you can particularly see it on my eyes, which are blue.

Where it, my eye is in the light, it's bright blue.

The that part of my face has been illuminated, it's lit up, it's glowing, and everything looks a little bit brighter.

It looks like I have two different coloured eyes, and it shows you the power of light there.

And that is why we said that light is a photographer's BFF, because it can just illuminate and bring your photographs to life in such a beautiful way.

Okay, so I'm going to move on now to one of our first major activities.

And this part of our lesson is called capturing the light.

So, what I did is I went on a treasure hunt around my home to find the light, and I was looking for a natural light, or I was looking for artificial light.

It didn't matter as long as I could find some and then I'll treasure hunt.

And so I came across, well, I came across it's in my house.

This really weird light switch that we inherited when we were moved into this house.

And if you look closely, can you notice the natural light in this, in this light switch? You might kind of see window shapes.

Press pause if you need to, but you can kind of see the window shapes there.

And then I turned the light on, and this is what I saw.

And I thought it was so interesting how the light was dispersed and it created these lovely patterns, these lovely shapes on the wall.

Can you see that? And then I did something else.

I looked at where the light was being dispersed to, and I noticed that it was being dispersed onto the ceiling.

And so I tried to capture that as well.

And I thought to me, it looked like those kinds of ripples that you see on the water or something really interesting and different.

And, and this is my home.

I'm in this home every single day.

And until I did this project, I didn't notice that.

I went on a treasure hunt and I found new, interesting discoveries.

And then I went outside.

And then I noticed the light out there as well.

Now this was recorded at winter time, when you might think there's not a lot of natural light, but the light does interesting things all year round.

And I noticed in this photograph how the light was coming through the trees and it was being reflected into the puddle.

And I had to take a moment just to capture it.

So if you're going outside, have a look.

How does light affect things around it? Look for light coming through things, through the windows, through the trees.

If it's bouncing off or reflecting off things, like cars, or puddles, or anything shiny.

And any interesting things you might see in the sky at different times of the day and at different times of the year.

Beautiful sunsets, clouds.

Okay, so your challenge today is to capture the light with your camera.

Just like I did, take your camera on a treasure hunt with you.

That could be inside, or it could be outside.

Can you capture any natural or artificial light? You can find natural and artificial light inside such as the sun coming in through the window, or some interesting light bulb like I had.

And you can also find natural and artificial light outside.

It could be the sun doing something interesting, or it might be a street lamp or some kind of neon sign you might see.

Here are some little things to look out for, look for what the light is doing and see if you can find any reflections.

They just might help guide you a little bit.

Enjoy, have fun, come back when you're done, speak soon.

For this next activity, we're going to be focusing on investigating light and we're going to be investigating the different light sources on the same subject.

Do you remember that word from last week? Subject, the thing that we're photographing.

So I chose a subject in my house, some dried flowers, and I have taken a picture of it with both natural and artificial light.

So let me show you.

So on the left, that is the photograph of the natural light.

And then I used artificial light to take a picture of it.

So I use the flash on my camera, on my smartphone.

Oops.

I turned it on and I took a picture of it.

And do you see how the colours are slightly different? Can you see what impact it's had on the overall image? Even if you just look at the wood below, you can see that one is much darker than the other.

And I, I think with the flash it seemed to pick up lots more.

It's a little bit more like high definition, like a bit more brighter luminous.

I'm not sure what you think about it, but that's that's what I think.

So I was just comparing the same subject with two different light sources.

And then I took it again from a different angle.

So again, on the left is the natural light, just with the light that was coming through the window.

And then I turned on the flash and this is what I captured with the, with the artificial light.

And one thing that I noticed when I use the artificial light, I can actually see some of the details in the flowers, these dried flowers, a little bit more carefully.

So I just did a quick sketch of that in my sketch book, and I wrote a little bit about it.

I actually preferred the natural light, but I did like that the artificial light allowed me to, to pick up some little things I might not have noticed so easily.

So that's what you're going to do now.

So your challenge is to capture the same subject in both natural and artificial light.

So choose something that you'd like to photograph, take photographs of it in a different light with and without the flash.

Which image do you prefer and why? And which light source did you prefer for this image? Press pause, come back when you're done, and we'll recap what we've done today.

Well done for making it through all of that.

You've worked so hard.

And I'm sure you've produced some beautiful work.

We've recapped what we've done.

We did a selfie where we compared the light.

We learned about different types of light.

We've been on a treasure hunt, looking for light.

And we've investigated light.

That's so much.

I hope after everything we've done today you've understood the importance of light to a photographer, and how a light really is a photographer's BFF.

Now I would love to see what you have created.

So please, if you can, and if you're adult says so, please if you want to share your work on Twitter, tag us in it so that we can have a look and see what everybody's done and enjoy each other's work.

All the best and I'll see you next time.

Lots of love.

Bye.