Eyes Tell All
The thing I love most about my job is that I get to enjoy the outdoors. I rarely feel like I’m working, or am missing out on something. It’s fun to chase the sun around, sometimes from dawn/dusk. My photo trivia question of the day is. Can someone tell me what a catch light is, and why is it important?
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I was just talking to another photographer I was assisting and he took a test shot of me and said he was checking the catch lights.
The catch light is the highlight in the eye from the light source. From it, you can deduce where the light was positioned and sometimes figure out what lighting was used.
I know I look for it in advertisements to figure out how the photographers lit their subjects. It’s why I subscribe to the fashion magazines. 🙂 It’s a great tool to know when learning lighting!
Catchlight are essentially the reflection of the light source in the subject’s eye. They tend to give an idea of how things were lit in a portrait. In your photograph, it’s at the desired position of 11 o’clock on her eye, which makes for nice, soft shadows.