I Love Lamp!
Jan. 13th, 2021 05:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerI recently made a small but satisfying discovery. It took me months to get to it, but once I did it was so obvious it was like "Duuuh!" The discovery? I love lamp.
The challenge is having enough light at my desk to look good on camera. Working via webcam is, of course, a reality in the post-Covid world. Being on camera— and looking reasonably good— is doubly important because I work in sales. Prospective customers will trust me better, as a representative of my products and my company, when they can see me.
A few things are important to looking good on webcam. I've long practiced webcam hygiene of taking care about what's visible in the background. Personal hygiene is important, too. When hair salons closed this spring, many of my male colleagues started looking like shaggy dogs; but l discovered hair self-care is surprisingly not hard when I put a modicum of thought into it. Then there's lighting. You need strong light to look good on camera, stronger than you need for doing ordinary office work.
The need for light shouldn't have surprised me. I've been an enthusiast photographer for years. Photography is the art of capturing light. I also specialized in computer graphics for several years and even worked a bit in TV production many, many years ago. I can explain what a key light, a fill light, and a back light are, and why and how you'd use each one.
Over the summer it was easy not to think about lighting. Plenty of natural light came flooding through my office windows. Through late autumn and into winter, though, the light's not bright enough. Even at midday my face looks ruddy and haggard on webcam.
"I need a lamp on my desk" is the obvious solution. But I hesitated to have a light on my face. You need strong light to look good on camera; much more light than you need to do or see things while working. It's hard to do knowledge work when you feel like you're being subjected to harsh interrogation!
The solution to so-so lighting came in a moment of "Why not?" last week. I had borrowed Hawk's task lamp from her crafting table to read dense printed materials at my desk. During my next webcam call I decided to angle it onto my face. It's a gooseneck lamp so that adjustment only takes a second. My idea was I'd try it once and so how effective/distracting it was.
It turns out it worked really well. The ring shape of her task lamp diffuses the light just enough that it doesn't feel like I'm getting the third degree. Yet the light is bright enough that it makes a huge difference in the visual quality on my webcam— even during the day. And the lamp is compact enough that it fits on my desk without a major rearrangement.
"I want my lamp back soon, you know," Hawk admonished me yesterday. I guess she loves lamp, too! But I was already one step ahead of her.
Since the experiment worked so well I had already searched online for ring lamps to buy. It turns out there are hundreds of models available now. They're marketed to the burgeoning category of vloggers— the people who earn money (or think they earn money) or revel in the attention of followers (or the bots whom they mistakenly think are real followers) by posting video selfies online.
Thankfully I don't need to delude myself into thinking I'm going to earn a living on makeup tutorials or Twitch-streaming my reactions to watching YouTube videos to buy similar equipment. But because so many people are buying the equipment for said endeavors, the choices and prices are pretty good right now. I've got a small, inexpensive lamp arriving (hopefully) tomorrow I'll try next.
The challenge is having enough light at my desk to look good on camera. Working via webcam is, of course, a reality in the post-Covid world. Being on camera— and looking reasonably good— is doubly important because I work in sales. Prospective customers will trust me better, as a representative of my products and my company, when they can see me.
A few things are important to looking good on webcam. I've long practiced webcam hygiene of taking care about what's visible in the background. Personal hygiene is important, too. When hair salons closed this spring, many of my male colleagues started looking like shaggy dogs; but l discovered hair self-care is surprisingly not hard when I put a modicum of thought into it. Then there's lighting. You need strong light to look good on camera, stronger than you need for doing ordinary office work.
The need for light shouldn't have surprised me. I've been an enthusiast photographer for years. Photography is the art of capturing light. I also specialized in computer graphics for several years and even worked a bit in TV production many, many years ago. I can explain what a key light, a fill light, and a back light are, and why and how you'd use each one.
Over the summer it was easy not to think about lighting. Plenty of natural light came flooding through my office windows. Through late autumn and into winter, though, the light's not bright enough. Even at midday my face looks ruddy and haggard on webcam.
"I need a lamp on my desk" is the obvious solution. But I hesitated to have a light on my face. You need strong light to look good on camera; much more light than you need to do or see things while working. It's hard to do knowledge work when you feel like you're being subjected to harsh interrogation!The solution to so-so lighting came in a moment of "Why not?" last week. I had borrowed Hawk's task lamp from her crafting table to read dense printed materials at my desk. During my next webcam call I decided to angle it onto my face. It's a gooseneck lamp so that adjustment only takes a second. My idea was I'd try it once and so how effective/distracting it was.
It turns out it worked really well. The ring shape of her task lamp diffuses the light just enough that it doesn't feel like I'm getting the third degree. Yet the light is bright enough that it makes a huge difference in the visual quality on my webcam— even during the day. And the lamp is compact enough that it fits on my desk without a major rearrangement.
"I want my lamp back soon, you know," Hawk admonished me yesterday. I guess she loves lamp, too! But I was already one step ahead of her.
Since the experiment worked so well I had already searched online for ring lamps to buy. It turns out there are hundreds of models available now. They're marketed to the burgeoning category of vloggers— the people who earn money (or think they earn money) or revel in the attention of followers (or the bots whom they mistakenly think are real followers) by posting video selfies online.
Thankfully I don't need to delude myself into thinking I'm going to earn a living on makeup tutorials or Twitch-streaming my reactions to watching YouTube videos to buy similar equipment. But because so many people are buying the equipment for said endeavors, the choices and prices are pretty good right now. I've got a small, inexpensive lamp arriving (hopefully) tomorrow I'll try next.
no subject
Date: 2021-01-14 01:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-14 02:29 am (UTC)The other issue to consider is the total brightness of the light. Even if the light is even, if it's too bright it'll still be distracting. Try moving the light farther away if it's too bright. Find the right balance between close enough to light your face and far enough to be just comfortable.
BTW, in case anyone's wondering how actors, models, etc. deal with intense lighting for pro quality photography, the answer is it's a professional skill they develop. They learn to do their jobs under lights that would have the rest of us squeezing our eyes shut and groaning, "Ahh! You're blinding me!" Frankly that's also why you see things like thousand-mile stares are so common in fashion photography. The models really can't see the camera.