Now Playing: Continuous Lighting

It's been a bit of a photo-oriented TV season this year, what with the VH-1 reality show The Shot, in which photographers are booted off the show one-by-one as they try to be even more pretentious than the others while trying to score their their Big Break.

But rather than give that any ink, there's another show premiering this weekend that may actually be of interest (albeit in a completely different way) to real photographers.

More after the jump.
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Let me preface this by saying that my wife and I are searching for a new house. And as such, it is possible that I may be completely addicted to enjoying watching HGTV during the wee hours while I work.

Hey, we are house hunting, okay, people? And besides, do you even know how much you can update a room by spray painting your cabinet pulls silver? Huh? Huh?


...Oh, hang on a sec. I'll be right back.

That was the UPS lady at the door. I have been waiting at home all day because I have to be here to sign for a delivery of three new SB-800's!

(Sorry. I had to tell someone. My wife still doesn't totally understand the joy...)


Okay, sorry. Where were we? Oh yeah, HGTV.

So, for those of you who have been learning about light over the last couple of years, have you actually applied any of this stuff to the lighting in your house? I mean, seriously, with CFL's using so little energy, you really can afford to do some neat looks with continuous light without propping up the electric company.

Just like light can drastically alter the way a photo looks, it can do the same for the rooms in your house. The same concepts apply, but the results last for a lot longer than a 250th of a second. I have been spending a lot of time thinking about this lately, as I plan for the I hope to turn into my cave office.

If you spend a little time thinking about the lights in your house in the same way that you think about the light in your photos, you'll start to see lots of parallels. Indirect lighting as a base "exposure," with spotlights and task lighting as accents. (Think grids and snoots.)

Cheapskate that I am, I love the concept of changing the way a room looks through lighting. I have played with it some in my current home, but am waiting to get a blank canvas to work with in the new house rather than throwing work into the one that we are leaving.

Premiering this Sunday at 9:00 ET/PT on HGTV is "Light it Up", a show that will focus only on home lighting ideas and techniques. I do not know how they will approach it, but most of the other stuff on the channel is actually pretty well done. So I'm game to give this one a try, too.

Some of the other shows touch on lighting as a theme, and I find this stuff to be very interesting. Here's one example, from another show, and I am just lighting geek enough to wanna see what the full-time lighting show will be like.

I'm looking forward to looking at interior, continuous lighting through the eyes of someone who knows what they are doing. I expect that I will certainly learn more about interior lighting, and may even get some ideas for photographic lighting. There's a lot of intellectual crossover between the two.

So, am I the only one trying to use my photographic lighting experience to improve my interior lighting at home? I am thinking at least a few of you have had the same idea.

Hit us in the comments with your ideas, solutions and/or pic URLs.

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(Cool lampshade photo by sumrow.)

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