Photo Tips - Creative Lighting
Creative Lighting - Outdoors and Indoors
Nothing creates great images like manipuating how light hits your subject. Use of Light Outdoors and Indoors will be explored. Good understanding of Light will help enhance your Photography in remarkable ways.
Outdoor Lighting
The Call of the Outdoors
The allure of the Majestic wide pano of Snow Covered Moumtain Scene, the Soft Petals of a Wildflower, the Expanse of a City Block, a High Rise Tower in Downtown Manhattan or the Smiles of a Newly Married Couple on a Beach in Hawaii at Sunset all can be captured in the Lens of your Camera.
How striking your images are depends on your use of the principles of composition, your ability to capture beauty and passion and how you use light to illuminate and frame your subject.
In this section we will explore how to use light to maximize the dynamics of our photography.
Morning and Evening Sunlight
No other time of the day provides better lighting then the early morning and the evening. The bright sun of midway takes away the soft shadows and light of dawn and dusk and leaves harsh contrasts and special problems for the digital photographer. We have ample reason to consider early and late to be our prefered time to photography people and places. Just think you might use the balance of the day to scout our you next photo shoot or even relax, read a book or enjoy your guest. How's that to some novel ideas?
Front Lighting
This is where the sun is behind you showering your subject with light. Where you want detail in your subject this is a good suggestion but has limitations.
The image may be bland with little shadow or contrast.
Back Lighting
Here the sun shines on the back of your subject. You subject becomes a silhoette in front of the sun. This has amazingly artistic value but loses detail in the body of the subject without the aid of reflectors, fill flash, or procedures in post editing such as Photoshop, Lightroom, etc. With the aid of the proper tool you can get some great results in background and subject.
Side Lighting
Side lighting or angle lighting may be a solution for Back or Front lighting. Here we have more options. Depending on the direction of the light we choose to allow on the subject we are able to apply a wide variety of effects. We can manipulate shadows, detail and contrast in our subject and surroundings. Often trial and error work to help us define our own style here.
Indoor Lighting
Indoor Lighting Pleasures
Maybe your passion is for taking portraits of individuals or creating great family images. Others my gravite toward still life, decorative potography or even homes or corporated indoor photography
As in outdoor photography how striking your images are depends on your use of the principles of composition, your ability to capture beauty and passion and how you use light to illuminate and frame your subject.
In this section we will explore how to use light to maximize the dynamics of our indoor photography.
Available Light
Some studio enthusiasts use only available light. They often build their studios with windows and doors to bring in light at the times of day they like to shoot. They may use reflectors or other devices to aid them to focus the natural light on their subjects. Even one of the rooms in your home may provide just the right light for taking great images.
Incandescent Lighting
Other than using available light from the outdoors, incandescent equipment is ofen the least expensive. The downside is that when the lights are being used they put out a lot of heat. Be prepared to use fans or a copious amount of air conditioning.
Strobe Lighting
Here your choices are great and so is the potential expense. Most often this equipment is purchased by the professional photographer. In most cases you will need at least two strobes. In addition you may want box lights, pan lights or other products umbrellas and barn doors. No these are not to be found on farms! Actually for the amatuer, a couple of camera strobes, inexpensive stands and an umbrella may do the trick for a lot less money.
The two basic types of lighting are High Key lighting which has the subject in front of a white or very light background. A low key set up will have the subject in front of a dark background. While a High Key set up can yield dramatic results the low key set up is more mystical in nature. This is a very individual thing. Rembrant lighting is a common technique that is low key with lighting set on a 45 degree angle to the subject.
Flash Lighting
As soon as possible buy an external flash. It fits on the hotshoe on your camera and it is eons better that a built in flash. Normally it can be swiveled to bounce light off of ceilings and walls to light a large area. This will keep you from having that annoying bright splash of light on your subject notorious with built in flash. We will add more to this later.