Master Photographers Worry About Appropriate Lighting
The direction and quality of lighting is everything to a master photographer
You may think the light is the light because its all you have when you have your camera to hand. Time of day and year makes a huge difference to the direction and angle of light and hence its appropriateness to the picture.
Hot Hints
Think about the direction and quality of lighting and the shadows it will create in your pictures.
The Photographers Ephemeris
Find out where and when the sunrise and sunset will be with an App called “The Photographers Ephemeris”. Available for iPad and Android. See http://photoephemeris.com/
The Feature Picture
The thing that struck me about the feature picture called The Skater was the contra-jour (backlighting) hence why I started to write about the key role of appropriate lighting in a picture.
I have also used this phrase before: “Amateurs worry equipment, Professionals about the fee and Masters worry about the light”. If you do landscapes, record the light, not the landscape!
Therefore learn to appreciate and understand appropriate lighting and everything else will fall in to place.
What was the key phrase in this post? Answers on a postcard.
The Learning Zone
Do you need to learn about the different qualities of lighting: direction, strength, clarity, etc?
If you want to learn and progress do a word cluster around the descriptions of light – see how many different ones you can think of or find. Here a few to start you off: hard, soft, glancing, frontal, backlighting, side lighting, wet etc
How appropriate is the lighting for the pictures you want to MAKE not just take? Remember Ansel Adams said, “Pictures are taken but photographs are made”.
A
Attraction
Understanding the reason for taking a picture and sharing it with a viewer
B
Background
Any picture will either sing or sag depending on the effectiveness of the background
C
Composition
“Composition is the art of leaving things out”
Andy Beel FRPS
