Understanding Light: Part One

I recently did a poll on which topics you guys wanted a tutorial on and lighting came out on top. So here’s my first lesson on lighting. In photography, lighting is everything. It is the very thing which you are capturing when you press the shutter release button on your camera. Without light, your photo would be solid black. Light is to photography what paint is to painting.
To study light is to study the lifeblood of photography. A deep understanding of light and it’s properties and characteristics is essential for all photographers to grasp


 Example photos
Here are some example photos to give you an idea of this principle in action. I've taken all the photos with the same exposure settings: ISO 800, shutter speed 1/15 and aperture f5.6. The only thing I changed was the distance of the light source, in this case I'm using my very handy Hdv-z96 , to the subject, some fake flowers. Pay attention to the brightness of the light. The photos are all taken straight out of the camera (SOOC) without any post processing applied.

Light source 108" away

Light source 96" away

Light source 84" away

Light source 72" away

Light source 60" away

Light source 48" away

Light source 36" away

Light source 24" away

Light source 12" away

Ambient light only (no artificial light source)

Here's a picture with the light source turned off to give you an idea of the ambient light in the room. There was a window on camera left which was giving some sunlight.

Setup

Here's a photo of the setup I used to take these photos. You can see the Hdv-z96 light mounted on a light stand. It's a rather small light source but packs a punch.

As you can see, the closer the light source is moved to the subject, the brighter the light becomes. Note, that the light was output at full power on all the photos.