Light, Science & Magic

Light, Science & Magic was a more technically-oriented read, and I’m not sure that others will appreciate the reading as much as I did. Most of this text discusses lighting as relates to things in the typical studio “still-life” realm. There is a section on portrait photography, but the main focus of the book is learning to light the “classic” examples of difficulty. Glass and metal are 2 materials that can be challenging to light. If you’ve never done commercial or still-life photography, then chances are you won’t be familiar with most of the techniques in this book. The text also discusses the properties of light as relating to different types of materials, e.g. diffuse, reflective.

This text reviews different types of lighting equipment (continuous light, strobe light, light modifiers, you name it!), and how you might use each. Most of the lighting setups in this book focus on creating the best lighting with the fewest lights necessary — the portrait section actually combines the most lights in one setup!

Additionally, this text discusses the effects of combining lights or firing the strobes multiple times in order to compensate for lack of light in a setup. I found this discussion interesting as well. While all of the images in this text are black and white, they provide excellent examples for what the “ideal” lighting should be as well as the results of a poorly lit object.

Having taken a studio lighting course recently, I was pleased to find a text that practically reviewed everything I learned about lighting inanimate objects. This will be a reference that I keep on my shelf for quite some time — even though I am mainly doing portrait work.

This book might not be the most intriguing reading for the “casual photographer”, but it does contain a lot of techniques that will be useful if you decide to include props in your portraits or if you want to focus more on the props themselves… or if you just want to have a better comprehension of how to manipulate light.

UPDATE: Check out the Book Review of Light, Science & Magic on Professional Photographer! Also, in 2007, a new edition was published.