Monday Meme: Windlight Settings

Strawberry has another Monday Meme, though I'm getting to it a day late. This one is on Windlight Settings, which I'm afraid I don't have much interesting to say on, though I think I have made some pretty pictures with them.

1. Do you use windlight while taking pictures? If not, why not? I do, and spend a decent amount of time playing with them. Since I started being able to do shadows, I do a lot of modifying using the time of day and east-angle settings.


2. When taking a closeup snapshot for a profile picture, which windlight preset do you use most often? It really varies widely. I tend to do photoshoots of about six shots,so I'll pick a windlight for the shoot and stick to that, with the exception of modifying the time of day or east-angle. I usually try to pick a good windlight, but you can see through the history of my shots times when it didn't work out very well. Shadows have added a whole new dimension to this, since sometimes I'm trying ti capture shadows as well, and different windlights cast different kinds of shadows. For a profile picture I might go for something broader, but it really depends on the mood I want to capture.


3. Which windlight presets do you use for full body portraits? It is the same as up close pictures - one interesting thing I've noticed is that light from facelights varies widely depending on how close or far you are from yourself. I'm just beginning to play with projectors, so I'm not sure how they vary with distance and angle, but they often seem to work better from a distance.




4. If you do landscape photography, which windlights do you use for that most often? With landscapes, I tend to find an angle I really like, then hop through a few different windlights. I have whole reams of pictures with different windlights and the same objects and angles. I've also begun playing with shadows and east-angle, both of which affect a landscape significantly.


5. Do you have any tricks or tips that you could share for using Windlight effectively? The east-angle is a major help for manipulating what is lit and what is in shadow. Don't be afraid to change different colors in presets, and if you find something you like, then save it for the future. I also recommend picking up as many different ones as you can, and experimenting with settings and suchlike.


6. Have you created any windlights that you would be willing to share with us? All of mine are modifications of the basic ones which come with Firestorm, so it would seem weird to share them.

( More landscape pictures here. More art pictures here. )