ABSTRACT
Lighting has nearly infinite permutations and variations. There is certainly no one “right” way to light a scene. Lighting with lots of shadows and highlights will increase the contrast of a scene and result in a broader range of tones. Flat front lighting does not reveal the shape and form of the subject. It tends to flatten everything out, to make the scene two-dimensional. Flat lighting is light that comes from very near the camera, like the flash mounted on a consumer still camera: it is on axis with the lens. Flat front lighting occurs when the key light is very close to the camera. The result is an image with few if any shadows and very little depth or dimension—flat and without shape. Especially on larger sets, it is often difficult or impractical to light every corner of the set with many different hard or soft light units, as was usually done in the classic hard lighting method.
