Monday, April 23, 2012

Beginning In Taking pictures: Understanding The Light

By Amos Navarro


Learning how different lighting affects a picture is half the job of getting better photos. This article aims to offer a quick overview of the several styles of light you would possibly encounter being a photographer and how to make use of them in your favor.

Direct light - Looking in the family picture album a few days ago, I noticed a recurring theme; photo after photo of us squinting on the sun appearing like ghosts with the flat, white faces and dark holes where our eyes should have been. This is certainly essentially the most common mistakes people make when taking photos in direct sunlight. By standing in your back to the sun, you effectively flatten out the light and as a consequence your subject. All those interesting lines and textures disappear and you are left with a single dimensional image. When you are shooting a portrait, you force your subject to look into the sun. This makes it difficult for them to not squint or contort their face into several unappealing shapes.

In case you are shooting during the day, when the sun is high, the shape of their brows might also create dark shadows over their eyes, effectively taking out the best feature in a portrait. This kind of light does have its advantages, especially morning and late afternoon as soon as the sun is low in the sky. The sunlight tends to be more golden and may cast a warm glow over subjects that will create some amazing colors. It truly is for this reason that landscape photographers love to shoot during these times of day. It's also quite flattering for people as the need to squint is less and late afternoon light carries a way of highlighting a person's eyes.

Diffused light - is non directional light, where the intensity of light is even; for example, an overcast day. This light is perfect for portrait photography because it creates little or no shadow at a person's face. This can be quite flattering to numerous people. For the same reason, diffused light is also useful in macro, or close-up photography. The evenness of light lets you capture detail in your subject that may otherwise be lost to overblown highlights or deep shadows if taken in direct sunlight.

There are some instances where this kind of lighting could be detrimental to a picture. For instance, landscape photography. Getting a picture of any expansive scene with a flat grey sky and dull colors over the landscape is simply plain unappealing. Because of these instances some sunlight provides multiple advances over create some interest in the sky and contours of the land.

Different lighting conditions are useful for different situations and different varieties of photography. The single thing to consider is the fact that we simply cannot modify the weather, but we are able to alter our method of taking pictures to cooperate from it. Be equipped for every situation and have a couple of different ideas when you're out. If you would like take family portraits and look for the sunshine too harsh, locate a tree or shaded setting to work in. Be inventive. Be flexible. Experiment. Walk around your subjects to acquire an idea of what sort of light changes at different angles. No matter the lighting conditions almost always there is ways to use them to your best benefit. You just need to find it.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment