What The Heck Is Clean Lighting Anyways?

Tough question right?

If you've followed me (or my work) for a while you have probably heard me ranting on and on about clean light. Maybe you've planning to attend one of my workshops, but either way there is absolutely no doubt have heard me harping on about about "clean lighting'.

Seriously though, what does that even mean?

When we were all learning light, we probably used white lighting in our photography. It was easier in a way. Just set up a bunch of lights, point them somewhat in the direction of the subject... and click. Done!

As I found through my own journey, we eventually come head to head with more creative techniques and better ways to set up our lights. We're all growing and learning every day, and one way to mix things up is to use colored gels in our shots.

Of course that presents us with a whole new selection of new problems, especially when we want to use more than one light.

The problem with using multiple gelled lights is that they cast different colors on separate parts of our subject.

If you place your lights badly, the light starts to look very 'busy' and 'messy' incredibly fast.

But counter to that, take a look at this image here.

Take a peek

Look at the very large areas of blue and orange. Imagine if this had lots of smaller sections of blue and orange on the face due to bad lighting. This then becomes very visually busy to look at and aesthetically not as pleasing.