Light: noun
Something that makes things visible or affords illumination: All colors depend on light.
Pretty important, huh? ALL colors depend on light.
pho·tog·ra·phy: noun
The process or art of producing images of objects on sensitized surfaces by the chemicalaction of light or of other forms of radiant energy, as x-rays, gamma rays, or cosmicrays.
Why do I make a deal about this? Simple... without light you don't have a picture. You have darkness. Light is the single most important aspect of a picture.
You need to understand light if you want to succeed at photography. There is natural light, artificial light, a mixture of both...
It's kind of a big deal...
Light has three primary aspects about it, that as a photographer, you need to understand.
Direction, Quantity, Quality...
They are each important. Each can make or break a picture... and they work in harmony!
For this post we'll talk about DIRECTION. We'll cover the other two topics later.
Direction... Where's it coming from? This isn't like driving around with your dad, husband, brother, or other male that won't ask for them... no, no... Where is that light coming from?
This is Michelle. I shot her a few weeks ago. She is gorgeous; very defined features that really make her a great model. She also has a great personality that helps too!
For this picture I used one (BIG) soft box at camera right. It was about 45 degrees off the center of her face. This is probably classified as a Rembrandt light (the small "triangle" of light on her cheek, camera left, helps classify it).
See where the light is coming from? Camera right. There is a subtle shadow on her right (our left) cheek. This also gave a nice highlight to her hair (which had a tint of red in it by the way).
This is my wife. She is pretty. I love her. She looks good in pictures.
For this shot it was almost as simple as it could be - a Nikon SB900 flash on top of my Nikon D80 camera. I pointed the flash head upward and used the bounce card that comes with the flash. I shot it TTL. Straight on simple light. Notice her face is evenly lit, with only a small drop off (shadow) on her right side (our left). This wasn't a beauty shot, in fact it was a quick "Hey I wonder if my camera is setup right" -type shot. It was ;-)
Direction... It's important. It's where your light is coming from.
Think about a sunset picture for a minute... where is the light coming from? Yeah - directly in front of you!
1 comment:
I'm glad you wrote something simple this time as it makes it easier for us "non photographers" to absorb some new info that will make our home photos better. And this helped a lot! Thanks!
-CathyT
Post a Comment