Musings: Light and Sound

I'm currently working on some daunting yet exciting changes for Teddie Hwang Photography. I'll share something here which I feel is why interdisciplinarity is so worth it: I was trying out a new lighting technique for myself and a friend was helping me with the set-up. Not quite understanding my intentions, my friend pointed out that one could also turn down the power of the flash.

I thought about our session on the way home and realized that this is another example of how light and sound are so comparable. Take the dynamic "forte" (loud) in music - we can either play a shrill forte or dark, immense forte. Or a diffused, ethereal "piano" (soft) versus a highly concentrated, "something is bubbling underground" kind of piano. It is not enough to just talk about the power or the "quantity" of something, but also the quality. Quality here solely means the characteristic and not whether something is good or bad.

Similarly in the application of lighting, we have to consider the quality of the light. The amount of light is also a contributing factor, but it is definitely not everything. The more dimensions we have to work with, the closer we are to attaining freedom in expression. 

A musician is an artist in sound, just like a photographer is an artist in light.