What A Difference A Day Makes

Or in this case, what a difference a light makes...

So, I realized that while I may not be on the lighting crew when I work on films, I have been around it enough to know the basics and how to improve the lighting of a room, especially for pictures and video. I got bored yesterday and realized that my profile picture on facebook was incredibly old. I thought, "hey, I should probably take a new one..." and nowadays, people will take pictures of themselves for the sole intent of creating a new profile picture.

So I grabbed my camera and set it up on my stereo, with only the white background of my wall visible. I set the timer, and ran back for the picture. The only problem... it was too dark. Sure, you could still see the picture, but it didn't "pop" or anything like that. Nothing was screaming "nice picture!"

I don't exactly have any kinos (see above picture) or 1ks, 2ks, etc just laying around, so hey - ya make do with what you've got! I grabbed a standing lamp from our rec room, unscrewed the top, took off the cover, and had just the bulb shining. I placed it accordingly, and tried again. Voila - instantly better pictures! Alright, so it had a bit of a yellow tint due to the bulb, but hey it was still a lot better than *no* light! Anyway, here is a before and after picture of my escapades!

(and yes, I touched it up before posting the far right one as my profile picture. :P )