There is a lot we can learn from history, particularly painters and other artists throughout the ages. One topic that I find endlessly fascinating is lighting and how it evolved throughout the centuries among painters. If you look back at the early Middle Ages and the High Middle Ages, a period spanning between roughly 400 AD and 1300 AD, you can see that paintings were dramatically different than those produced in the Renaissance
and modern eras.
Back then, paintings were more what you or I would consider illustrations today. They were flat, seemingly one-dimensional. Lighting was either not present at all, or it was a sort of general, directionless lighting that left shadows in odd places, making it difficult for you to tell where, precisely, light
would be coming from.
In fact, you could compare those early lighting techniques to the diffuse lighting that we photographers sometimes use today. To those painters, paintings were less about technical accuracy or realism and all about documenting or telling a story. In the same way, we use diffuse lighting when we don’t want the focus to be on highlights and shadows, but instead, on the subject
material itself. For instance, if you wanted to take a picture of an airplane, the diffuse lighting of a cloudy day allows you to capture the airplane in great detail while minimizing glare on glossy glass and metal...
