Lighting

Key

Key light highlights the form and dimension of a subject, with the use of 3 lights including the key light a three dimensional affect is achieved to make the subject stand out against the background. If just a key light is used, the background may not be very luminated and thus we focus on the subject.





Fill

Fill light's purpose is to reduce contrast in a shot, and therefore illuminates darker or shadowy parts in the set. It is often softer and less intense than key light so as not to lighten the shadow too much. As seen in this picture, the fill light is illuminating the grey background so there is less contrast between the subject and it (unlike the picture above in key light).







Back

The purpose of back light is to illuminate the subject from behind, it can be natural or artificial light. The viewer and the back light face each other with the subject in between them, as a result the subject appears glowy around the edges (halo effect) and some parts may appear shadowed. It can be used to create a silhouette effect.





High key

High key lighting's purpose is to reduce the lighting ratio in a shot by reducing the amount of shadow in the shot. So the shot is fairly bright. However, since the whole shot is brightened high key l is not very good at creating meanigful semiotic lighting as you can't really make subjects lighter or darker than others since the ratio is less.





Rim

Rim light, like back light, illuminates the subject from behind and directly faces the camera. Because of this, the light must be blocked out by the subject. This creates a slight rim of light around the subject, as seen on the right hand side of this image. It is a kind of back light, where the light is usually placed right behind the subject.






 
Chiarosauro

Chiarosauro is when there is a strong contrast of light and darkness in a shot or a painting, etc. The great contrast can be used to volumise subject to create three dimensions out of two dimensions in a painting, or the strong contrast could be representative of something.