Even when it seems like you’re looking at white light, it has a “Temperature” measured in “Kelvins”. Midday sunlight and camera flashes are a bluish-white at about 5500 Kelvins. Indoor warm tungsten lights are reddish-orange, around 3500 Kelvins. But the best rule here is to learn how to white balance your camera, or at least how to set the auto white balance, so your photos don’t get a color cast of blue or red. If you want to control the color of light, buy gels of different colors to put over light sources.
Light and shadow creates contrast and the appearance of volume. This is an obvious point but I bring it up to get you thinking about levels of contrast as a psychological tool when taking photos. You can sculpt or paint with light to convey an artistic meaning. High contrast with inky black shadows and bright highlights is a look synonymous with drama, mystery, emotion, and depth. Low contrast with even, diffused lighting and less dark/light variation brings to mind cleanness, purity, and general positivity. Most photos should fall somewhere in between. Too much contrast and you risk having a photo look dark and unapproachable, too little and your shot looks clinical and plain.
Light falloff from any source follows a “simple” rule: the strength of the cast light on a subject is the square root of the distance from the source. You don’t need to do math in your head to use this rule, just remember that if you move twice as far from a light source, the light it casts is only one quarter as bright. This effect increases exponentially the farther away things get. Say you’re taking a photo with a single light source and your background is distracting. You want to expose for your subject properly and darken the background. Changing the strength of the light source won’t help, plus if the light is coming from a fixed position like a window, you can’t move it in relation to the background. Just move the subject closer to the light and the background will become darker.
A lot of photography involves an artificial controlled light source, namely flashes and strobes. Familiarity with basic lighting techniques can help you plan how to light a portrait, especially when shooting with artificial lighting or reflectors. With a single light source you can pull off some classic portrait lighting that looks great. Achieve a dramatic Rembrandt portrait with a single light source off to one side, so shadows fall across the face. Position the light source around 45% so there is a triangle of light below the eye in shadow. This technique looks best when you can see a glint of light called a “catchlight” in the eyes of your subject. Move the light source a little further so it is directly on one side of your subject and you have split lighting, with one half the face in shadow. Move your light the other way (more head-on than rembrandt lighting) and you have loop lighting, with less shadow overall. For this look, aim the light so a small triangle shadow of the nose falls on the subject’s cheek.
A basic three point lighting technique is the standard for evenly lighting a subject during photography and film shoots. You need three light sources: a key, fill and back light. The key is strongest, like a spotlight on the subject from the front and off to one side, the fill is weaker from the other side to fill in shadows, and the back light (also usually weaker than the main key light) points at the back of the subject, towards the camera, to make them stand out from the background. This technique is often expanded by using one or more lights to properly light the backdrop or background behind your subject.
In most cases, the bigger and more diffused the light source, the better. A big window with indirect sunlight coming through is great for portraits, and if it’s direct light shining in, hang a thin white sheet over the window. Overcast days make the sky a huge diffuser and help soften shadows for outdoor photography subjects. If you put a diffuser, umbrella or soft box over your light source, it can make a huge difference when trying to achieve clean looking photos. The opposite point is that narrow light sources are sharp and cast strong shadows that, when used to your advantage, can have the effect of adding dimension to a scene. Think of sunlight coming through cracked window blinds and falling in lines across the room. When you want a dramatic effect, especially in black and white, a hard edged, non-diffused light sources can make for amazing “film noir” stylized photos.
No, we’re not talking about near death experiences, we’re talking about lighting techniques! Don’t get stuck in the pattern of always putting your light source behind you, pointed the way your camera is facing. Shooting directly at a light source like the sun, or a flash, or even a streetlight at night can add a dramatic silhouette, a back / hair / rim lighting on a model, lens flares and depth to your subject matter. It is easy to over-do it, but try letting a little light source show in your shot.
The Golden Hour is the time right after sunrise and right before sunset. It is widely considered the best time of day for doing landscape photography because of the warmth of light being cast and the beauty of the sky at these times. It is a great time of day for any type of photography, but watch out in the evenings when your sunlight disappears quickly. You will have to adjust for the loss of light with longer exposures, aperture or ISO changes.
Sometimes we can’t avoid deer-in-headlights direct lighting when a flash is attached to the camera, pointed straight at the subject. But it is always better to get that flash off your camera if you can, or at least bounce it off an adjacent wall or ceiling. You will see an immediate improvement in your flash photography when using off-camera flash techniques. If you have a flash already and don’t have a remote flash trigger or off-camera flash cord, do yourself a favor and get one. Even the very cheap solutions work well. You don’t even need a light stand: just holding the flash above your head will make all the difference. If you can’t detach your flash, as mentioned you might be able to make it indirect by bouncing it off a nearby wall, ceiling or even a white piece of paper in front of it. I know a photographer who always sticks folded business cards in front of his pop-up flash and it really works a lot better than direct flash.
One other flash related tip: If you are outside on a sunny afternoon, find some shade to put your subject in, especially for portraits. In most cases try to avoid spotty shadows falling on faces through leaves and branches. If you have a flash, set exposure so the sunny background is properly exposed without flash, then add flash and use it to fill in the darker under-exposed subject. Even if you can’t find shade for your subject, fill flash can help even out the shadows on your subject’s face in full sunlight. Just that little bit of extra planning can change a snapshot into a professional looking photo.
There are varying degrees of control any given camera system employs, so you have to work within your limits. Whether you shoot with an expensive pro camera or a disposable toy camera, you have to think of yourself as the most limiting factor. Photography is 10% technical knowledge and 90% experience. You can take stunning photos with any camera and lighting setup. The best way to figure out what techniques work for you is to experiment and take a LOT of pictures. The famous street photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson said that “your first 10,000 photos are your worst” But don’t be discouraged. Most of us don’t have the time to shoot photographs all day! When you do have the time, try out different ideas to see what works and what doesn’t.
