FEATHERING.

Feathering is a time-honoured lighting technique originally applied by traditional portrait photograhers. This technique has more than one application and usage, not only in portraiture but in other areas of photograhic lighting.

Let's start with the basic original concept. Back in the day, before all of the now popular light modifiers such as umbrellas, softboxes, beauty dishes, and diffusion screens, the standard lighting tools of the portrait photograher were and in some cases still are light sources such as incandescent flood lamps or electronic flash units with parabolic reflectors. Most of these reflectors are made of metal such as spun aluminum with a matte silver finish. The range is sized between 12" and 24 in diameter. The charismatic light beam from these units consists of a brighter (hot spot) at the center of the beam called the UMBRA which diminished in intensity as it graduates toward the edge of the beam, this is called the PENUMBRA.

These "old-fashioned" unmodified light sources are still in use today, by experienced portrait photographers, to create a wide variety of artistic effects. It is not especially difficult to employ, however, it requires a much more precise lighting approach and keen observation of the effect on the subject. You are not flooding the entire subject or set with very soft ligt but positioning the lights more precisely and discriminately as yo observe the effect on the subject. The hardness and softness of light are controlled, by distance, the relative size of the light source to the subject, and FEATHERING.

If you were to aim the hot spot directly at the subject the light effect may seem too harsh, somewhat uneven across the face and body, and may tend to blow out the diffuse highlights and at the same time not produce the right intensity of specular highlights.

The first basic type of feathering technique is simple and easy to do, almost instinctively with practice, is simply to rotate the light TOWARD THE CAMERA SUBJECT AXIS so the EDGE of the light is illuminating the subject's face. If you observe carefully, you will see exactly where the edge of the hot spot (umbra) begins to fall off and where the penumbra begins, and how much of it is in play. Fine adjustment in the rotation will yield a wide scope of various effects vis-à-vis harder and softer lighting. Let's call this horizontal rotation The light has placed athe angle (such as anywhere between 0 and 135 degrees to the camera/subject axis and the height that is necessary to produce the desired light pattern and the unit is rotated toward the camera. Generally speaking, the umbra (hot spot) is now in front of the subject axis.

The next type of feathering movement is VERTICAL feathering. Sometimes, the sibject's forehead exhibits b blown out defuse highlights because of the angle of the incident at which the light strikes that part of the face, or perhaps due to a bit more perspiration or "shine" of the skin there. Feathering the light downward at the same time as rotating it towardthe camera will address that issue and also place the hot spot on darker clothing in a low-key portrait which will help preserve shadow detail in the dark fabric.

Feathering, in general, will help in rendering skin texture in character studies and theatrical portraiture and will produce a natural and robust rendition of texture in healthy skin.

Thus far, most of the aforementioned theory pertains to the MAIN light source in a portrait setup, however, the is a lot more to come.

The fill light, which is near the camera, can also be feathered to provide a more even and softer fill light and also help control the lighting ratio. The ratio can be altered by changing the powe setting of the fill light or by moving it nearer or further away from the subject, however, these adjustments can be carefully tweaked by feathering to various extents.

In traditional portraiture, there are some standard lighting forms that have to do with matching a lighting method or placement with various facial structures. These also provide the photograher with control over the mood and drama of the image, They are often referred to as butterfly, modified-butterfly or loop lighting, Rembrabntt, and split. By controlling, the extent of shadow or shading on the subjects' faces, very wide of thin facial structures can be deemphasized or somewhat "normalized" in appearance. Combined withte various lighting forms there is the concept of broad and short lighting which is based on the direction of the main lighting in relation to the position of the face. A shot lig will tend to narrow a heavy-set or round face whereas a broad ligh will tend to widen a very narrow face. Some p portrait photograher will apply a brad ligt to a round face and use FEATHER to produce the shading. Please see the attached diagrams for these basic lighting forms.

If you employ KICKER, HAIR, or BACKGROUND lights, feathering is essential. These lights usually strike the subject from a more OBTUSE ANGLE OF INCIDENCE between 90 and 180 degrees. Even if the powe and distance of these lights are the same similar to that of the main light or if the rim or profile lighting is applied, blown highlights can occur. Kicker and hair lights are accent light so you want a subtle but distinctive diffuse and specular highlight but not a burnout so feathering will help in retaining detail in those accented highlights. If done correctly you will get a glow inthe hair, retaining the colour, a continuation of the main light, but not a "bleached-out" white spot.
In portraiture, a KICKER lig is used to add additional specular highlights on specific aspects or features of the face. It is often used to emphasize the far side of the face or profile ofhte nose and upper lip areas. It is usually used in conjunction withte the main lig. If the main lig is between 25 and 45 degrees to the camera/subject axis the kicker can be placed from 90 to 135 degrees. If the main lig is set at 90 degrees, the kicker must be about 135 degrees to the camer/subject axis. A problem can arise of the man and kick ligh overlap on the subject- highlight can diminish or blow out.FEATHER these lights so that the bams do not totally overlap, especially the UMBRAS, will help increase specularity inthe desired areas without the burnout.

A Background light that is feather upward or downward will evenly illuminate the background, provide separation, color, or tonal mass without an artificial halo or spot of light effect. There's more!

If you do not care to use raw parabolic lights but pref to go with umbrellas, softboxes, other soft-box-lie modifiers, or beauty dishes, feathers are still an applicable technique. Just about any controllable lig source can be feathered. With larger and softer sources, the effect won't be as noticeable or delineated as you observe the lighting as you work but it is still there. Most of these modifiers do not have a real hot spot but the edge of the there beams still has a good influence over the rendition of texture and the evenness of light across a face or other subject and the appearance of specular highlights that can lend addition "sparkle" to the image. There is a less abrupt falloff toward the edge of the beam but that edge is there.

Feater is bluster essential in ONE LIGHT setups with softboxes and umbrellas. The one soft light source and a reflector or two can yield excellent results. In this kind of setup, the softbox or umbrella-equipped light is feathered off-axis, just enough so the end of the beam strips the fill-in reflector(s) and ligh is the redirect to control fill light ratios. The REFLECTOR is also FEATURED to visually obtain the desired effect. This system is very applicable to tabletop and still, life work as well.

In portraiture, I will sometimes keep my umbrella in a parallel position to the subject, that is, straight up and down rather than tilted. I will move the light vertically to obtain the modelling effect and lighting pattern I want to achieve. The falloff of light athe bottom of the composition provides a natural vignette that better trends to direct the viewers' eye to the subject face.

A beauty dish (a pan reflect with a built-in center defector) has no hotspot. Nonetheless, it can be feathered in a very unique way. It can be used as described in a one-lig setup with reflector(s). The edge of the beam does have some similar charismatics to an ordinary parabolic System. One rather unique trick or feature is very interesting. If you feat if iff to an extreme point where osm of the raw ligh for the lamp or flash tube kinda sneaks out from behind the deflector and strives the subject, you have a "twofer" that is two effects fothe price of one. You get both harder and softer lig with the twist of your wrist and can make a variation of lighting in seconds.

If you are observant, you can somets spot "feathered" light occur in nature. A shaft of sunlight coming in between trees or buildings or light coming in through a narrow window or doorway.

The "Old Hollywood" style entailed a lot of feature Fresnel and optical spotlights. You can achieve very classical butterfly, loop, and Rembrandt lighting with the indicative low-key shadows but with great ski texture, speculative, but no blowouts.

There's more yet! Barndoors and gobos can be used in conjunction with feathering. Most of that will be the subject of another soon-to-come post.
Even with the use of barn doors, black panels, or gobos, feathering itself can be used to prevent main lights from over-lining a background or employed to spill some additional light on the background if no background light is in use.

In commercial, products, still-life, food and beverage illustration, macro, scientific, medical documentation, and more, feathering is an indispensable technique for a good rendition of textures. Fine detail in fabrics, textiles, leathers is essential in fashion, furniture, and catalogue photograhy.

EXPOSURE CONSIDERATIONS: Obviously, the PRONUMBRA or engs of a typical ligh bean has LESS intensity or volume than the UMBRA (hotspot). this will have an effect on exposure. In turn, this will also affect lighting ratios. This is not a difficult issue to address in that you will base your exposures and ratios on the actual performance ofhte the lights their AESTHETIC POSITIONS, which will be feathered or unfeathered as per your taste and methodologies. I mention this just to make newcomers to this style of lighting aware that your regular exposure setting or flas guide number will be altered when feathers are employed. Automat TTL exposure managing features in your camera or external command system may pick up on the differences. May portrait shooter set up their ligt and operat the cameras in manual mode and will soon leanto make any compensations. due to feathering instinctively.

When using electronic flash, out of doors, off-camera, for a main directional light source, feathering can be more difficult to employ in that the effect of modelling lamps is hard to detect in bright natural light or your on or off-camer Speedlight may have no modelling lamp. You do not want the lig produce by a modelling lamp to mix with natural light as that can affect both exposure and colour balance. Even with Speedlights or an umbrella or softbox-equipped strobe, some feathering can be accomplished with practice. When the flash is employed as a fill light in out-of-doors or sunlight situations, feathering may not be required to arrive athe desired effect.

Please see 2 more charts in the next post.