Chapter 13 — Exercises

Natural light is the one lighting skill you can practice every waking hour, because it is everywhere and free. These exercises turn "reading light" from a phrase into a reflex. Do the shooting ones with whatever camera you have — a phone by a window is the ideal tool for almost every exercise here — and take the starred items seriously, because several feed your Project 1 talking-head directly.

Exercises are graded by effort and depth:

• ⭐ Warm-up — a few minutes; locks in a concept.
• ⭐⭐ Core — the real practice; do as many as you can.
• ⭐⭐⭐ Stretch — deeper or more ambitious; where the biggest gains are.

Model solutions and critiques for the starred and odd-numbered exercises are collected in Answers to Selected Exercises at the back of the book. Try each one before you read its answer — a wrong attempt teaches more than a right answer you only read.

A. Seeing the light (Eye & Ear Training — no camera)

These need nothing but your eyes and your attention. They build the reflex the whole chapter depends on.

1. ⭐ Where is the light? For one full day, every time you look at a person's face — in real life, in a show, in an ad — answer one question before you look away: which direction is the light coming from? (Front, side, 45°, back, top; window, sun, lamp, sky.) Do it twenty times. You are building a shooter's single most important reflex. (Answer discusses what to notice.)

2. ⭐ Hard or soft? Look at ten shadows today — a shadow on a face, a shadow on the ground, a shadow on a wall — and for each, decide hard or soft from the edge alone. Crisp edge, hard source; feathered edge, soft source. Then find what cast it and confirm.

3. ⭐⭐ Read one room. Walk into any room and, in thirty seconds, decide out loud where you would seat a person for the best light and why — naming the direction, the quality, and the color of the source you'd use. Do this in five different rooms. (Answer provides a worked read of a sample room.)

4. ⭐⭐ Track the daylight. Pick one window in your home and photograph the light on a wall beside it at 9 a.m., noon, and an hour before sunset. Note in words how the direction, quality, and color changed across the day. You are learning to predict light before you arrive.

5. ⭐⭐⭐ Name the color in kelvin. For one day, whenever you notice light, guess its color temperature in kelvin before checking your instinct against the chapter's table: candle/lamp (~2000–3000K), golden hour (~3000–4000K), midday sun (~5500K), overcast (~6500K), open shade (~7500K), blue hour (~10,000K+). Being able to name the color is the first step to setting white balance for it. (Answer provided.)

B. Reading Described Shots (Read the Sequence)

6. ⭐ Picture the window. Re-read FIGURE 13.3 (the window-lit talking-head). Without looking, sketch the top-down setup as a simple box: where is the window, the subject, the camera, the bounce? Compare to FIGURE 13.2. Did you put the window to the side of the subject, not behind the camera or behind the subject?

7. ⭐⭐ Diagnose the field. In FIGURE 13.4 (golden-hour backlight), THE LIGHT uses the sun as a rim and a bounce as fill. Rewrite THE LIGHT and THE EFFECT as if you removed the bounce entirely. What happens to the face, and why? (Answer provided.)

8. ⭐⭐ The mixed-light call. Re-read FIGURE 13.7 (the Café reverse). The shooter chose to embrace the mixed light and balance for the window. Rewrite THE LIGHT for the other three options — kill one source, match the sources, split-and-correct — and say what each would cost or gain. (Answer provided.)

9. ⭐⭐⭐ Write your own. Find a real window-lit or golden-hour shot you admire (in a film, an ad, a music video) and write a full Described Shot for it using all seven fields. Pay special attention to THE LIGHT: name the source, the direction, the quality, and your best guess at the color in kelvin. (Model answer provided.)

C. Finding and shaping the free light (Shoot This)

This is the heart of the chapter. Make things with a window, the sky, and the sun.

10. ⭐ The window portrait. Seat a person beside your largest window, turned ~45° toward it, camera steady. Set white balance for daylight, expose for the face, and shoot fifteen seconds. That is a complete, professional-looking key. Keep it. (Model self-critique provided.)

11. ⭐⭐ Angle and distance. Using the same window, shoot the subject (a) right at the glass and (b) six feet back into the room. Then, at one distance, shoot them (c) facing the window and (d) turned away toward the room. Watch all four: name what distance changed (falloff/contrast) and what angle changed (which cheek is lit). (Answer provided.)

12. ⭐⭐ Golden-hour backlight. At sunrise or sunset, put a subject with the low sun behind them so it rims their hair. Expose for the face and shoot; then hold a white card (or have a friend hold one) low and in front to bounce light back into the face. Compare with and without the bounce. Beat the clock — you have twenty minutes. (Answer provided.)

13. ⭐⭐ Open shade rescue. On a harsh sunny day, shoot a face (a) in direct midday sun, then (b) after moving ten feet into open shade at the edge of a building, facing the open sky, with the shade white balance set. Which is more flattering, and by how much?

14. ⭐⭐ Negative fill for shape. On an overcast day (or in flat open shade), shoot a face as-is, then shoot it again with a black card / dark jacket held close to the shadow side. Watch the face gain shape as you remove light. Write one sentence on why subtracting worked. (Answer provided.)

15. ⭐⭐⭐ The no-budget three-tool day. In harsh sun, shoot one face four ways using only found surfaces: raw; + diffusion (a sheet held overhead); + white bounce into the shadows; + negative fill on the far side. Rank them. Name which single tool did the most. (Answer discusses the usual winner.)

16. ⭐⭐⭐ One subject, three times of day. Shoot the same person in the same spot at midday, golden hour, and blue hour (just after sunset). Set white balance correctly for each. Line them up: the light alone tells three different emotional stories about the same face. Which serves a hopeful piece? A melancholy one?

D. One subject, five ways (Five Ways)

17. ⭐⭐ Five directions from one window. Keep the camera and subject distance fixed. Move the subject's orientation through five positions relative to the window: facing it, 45° toward, profile, 45° away, backed to it. Watch back-to-back. Which gives the most pleasing shape without losing the far eye? (Self-select and justify.)

18. ⭐⭐⭐ Five fills, one face. In the same soft window key, shoot the shadow side five ways: no fill, white bounce, silver bounce, gold bounce, and negative fill. Note how each changes the contrast and color of the shadow. Which would you use for a warm, friendly testimonial? For a serious, dramatic one? (Answer provided.)

E. Diagnose and prescribe (Fix the Shot & Settings Drill)

19. ⭐ Fix the silhouette. A described clip: a person is interviewed sitting directly in front of a bright window; their face is a dark shape, the window blown white behind. Name the problem and the single fastest fix. (Answer provided.)

20. ⭐⭐ Fix the blue face. A described clip: a subject shot in the shade of a building looks faintly blue and slightly sickly; the shot before it, in the sun, looked fine. What went wrong, and what two things do you change? (Answer provided.)

21. ⭐⭐ Fix the mismatched interview. A described piece: an interview shot beside a window over forty minutes; early answers are warm and bright, later ones cooler and darker, and they will not cut together. Diagnose every cause and prescribe fixes sorted by stage (pre / production / post). (Answer provided.)

22. ⭐⭐ Settings drill — golden hour. You are shooting a backlit portrait at golden hour with a phone or camera. Write your starting choices: white balance, shutter, aperture, ISO, ND (if any), and your shoot order. Explain the ND and the shoot-order choices. (Model answer provided.)

23. ⭐⭐ Settings drill — the mixed room. You must interview someone in an office with a bright window on one wall and warm ceiling lights everywhere. You cannot turn the ceiling lights off. Write your plan: which of the four mixed-light options you choose and exactly how you execute it. (Answer provided.)

24. ⭐⭐⭐ Settings drill — the café. Plan the natural-light version of the Café Scene seated-by-window shot, consistent with the locked geography (window is the key; warm counter lamps are practicals). Specify subject position, white balance, exposure target, and how you handle the mixed light. (Model answer provided.)

F. Steal it on purpose (Recreate It)

25. ⭐⭐ Recreate the north-window portrait. Find a classic painterly "north light" portrait (soft directional light, one lit cheek, a shadowed side, a catchlight in the near eye) and recreate its light with your own subject and a real window. You are matching light, not the person. (Guidance provided.)

26. ⭐⭐⭐ Recreate a golden-hour hero shot. Pick a famous golden-hour shot (a backlit figure against a glowing sky is the classic). Recreate its lighting logic — sun as backlight, face in shade, warm rim, glowing background — with a person you can film this week. Note what you could and could not match, and why. (Answer discusses the achievable version.)

G. Cut it (Cut This)

27. ⭐⭐ Assemble the comparison. Take your Production Checkpoint footage (natural-light vs built-light talking-head) and lay both on a timeline, cutting between them every few seconds. Watching them intercut makes the differences obvious in a way that watching them separately does not. Note which one you'd keep and why. (Guidance provided.)

28. ⭐⭐ Cut the golden-hour piece. From your golden-hour shoot (Exercise 12 or 16), cut a 20-second sequence. Because the light was changing as you shot, you will discover matching problems in the edit — note where two shots do not cut cleanly because the light jumped, and what you would do differently on the next shoot. (Answer discusses the lesson.)

29. ⭐⭐⭐ Two moods from one shoot. Using only footage from your "three times of day" shoot (Exercise 16), cut two 15-second edits of the same subject that leave a viewer with two different feelings, using the light and pace as your only tools. This is the whole argument of the chapter: the light is the mood.

H. Interleaved (mixing prior chapters)

Skills fade unless you braid them together. These pull earlier chapters into this one.

30. ⭐⭐ Light + composition (Ch.6–7). Shoot a window-lit talking-head that is also well composed: subject on a third, correct headroom and lead room (§6.2), a clean background. Then shoot a matching wide and close-up (coverage, §7.5) under the same window light, close together in time so they cut. Confirm the light matches across sizes. (Answer provided.)

31. ⭐⭐ Light + exposure (Ch.5). Shoot a backlit golden-hour subject and expose it two ways: once for the bright background (face goes dark) and once for the face (background blows out). Read each on your camera's waveform or zebras (§5.4). Which serves a portrait, and which serves a silhouette? Both are valid — for different stories. (Answer provided.)

32. ⭐⭐⭐ Light + movement + continuity (Ch.8–9). Shoot a short walk-and-talk at golden hour: the subject moving so the low sun stays behind them as a rim. This forces you to plan the walk and the sun and the screen direction (§9.2) at once. Note how quickly the light changed and what it did to continuity across takes. (Answer discusses the planning.)

I. Synthesis

33. ⭐⭐⭐ The Production Checkpoint, defended. Complete the chapter's Production Checkpoint: shoot the natural-light window version of your talking-head, compare it to your built-light version, and write the paragraph naming which you'll use for Project 1 and why — in story-and-shoot terms, not just "it looks nicer." (Model answer shows a strong vs weak defense.)

34. ⭐⭐⭐ Teach it back. In about 200 words, explain to a beginner why "you don't control the light, you control your position relative to it." Use a window and one outdoor example, and name at least one tool for adding light and one for subtracting it. Teaching it is the strongest proof you own it. (Model answer provided.)

35. ⭐⭐⭐ Frame Log, the light entry. Add a Frame Log entry every day this week naming, for one shot you watched, where the light came from, what quality it was, and its rough color. At week's end, read them back — you will find you now see light in everything, which is exactly the eye this part was built to give you.

J. Going further

36. ⭐⭐ The mixed-light decision. Find a real mixed-light room — a kitchen or office with a window on one wall and warm lamps on — and shoot the same framing of a face four ways, executing each of the four options: (a) kill the lamps (daylight only), (b) leave the mix but embrace it, balancing for the window, (c) leave the mix but balance for the lamps, (d) auto white balance, moving the camera between takes to see it hunt. Line them up. Which reads most "real"? Which is unusable? (Answer provided.)

37. ⭐⭐⭐ Recreate the Café look. Using the Café Scene's locked geography (window as key, warm practicals behind), stage your own version anywhere you have a window and a warm lamp: seat a subject by the window (soft daylight key across the face), put a warm lamp behind them as a motivated practical, balance for the window, and let the lamp glow. You have just built the embraced-mixed-light café look from scratch. Note what made it read as "cozy" rather than "wrong."

38. ⭐⭐⭐ The location audit. For your Project 1, scout three different locations you could shoot the natural-light talking-head in (three different windows, or a window plus two outdoor options). For each, write a two-line read: direction, quality, color of the available light, and where you'd stand the subject. Pick the winner and justify it. This is the pre-production habit — choosing the light before the shoot day — that separates a calm shoot from a scramble. (Model answer provided.)

When you have shot the window portrait, chased one golden hour, and made peace with a mixed-light room, you have the most portable lighting skill there is — one that works on any budget, in any location, for the rest of your life. Next, in Chapter 14, we give that beautiful image the clean sound it deserves.