Every picture you take is just a record of one thing: Light. It is an invisible brush that paints every image, and if you don’t understand it, you are not really making photos.
Many years ago, I was in a friend’s darkroom – a name that perhaps any film photographer would recognize – and was a big sign on the wall that said, “This is light, stupid!” and so it is. As photographers, we should know about a lot of things, all at the same time. However, in my view, there is an overriding issue that reduces everything else, and it is light. To make a really compelling pictures, we must know about it and have a clear understanding of light – what it is and what it does. We take a picture of light, not the object that is falling. And it is very important to understand that discrimination.
Light performs many functions in photos. The first and most obvious is the act of providing local and overall lights. In addition, the light also reveals the form and texture, provides the definition, and helps to set the mood of the picture.
Prior to digital days, when we used the film, we should have known about light energy that we could not see because their wavelengths were in the non-divine border. These included ultraviolet and infrared light. An abundance of ultraviolet light may have an unpleasant purple color and presence of mist. Modern digital sensors have solved that issue to an extent. However, when I use color transparency film-Aka Slide Film-Outside, I always use a UV-15 filter. Therefore, although we cannot usually see UV light from our eyes, it is there and can affect our image. It is beyond the limits of human vision. The infrared light is at the other end of the spectrum, again out of the ability of human vision. It is interesting to note that some digital cameras can be modified to see IR light, which some people really enjoy and some are an expressive medium for some, especially in black and white.
For film users, there were films designed to watch real infrared lights. Those films are no longer produced, and they require special filtration for exposure and special handling in loading and development to avoid fogging. Contemporary IR movies are being made; However, he is not true IR films.
Most often, when we consider a possible solution to a photographic problem, the first thing is that the volume of light falling, or phenomenon, the object or scene we are painting. This is a valid anxiety, but once a proper exposure solution is set, there are other issues that must be dealt with. In fact, I try to deal with these other things, before I determine an exposure solution, in my view, they sometimes have things that make a picture effective – or it can cause all the visual appeal to lose. Many times, we respond to an image emotionally before considering these other factors. But remember, your camera deal with things with emotions or does not see. This is strictly a human response, and the camera only sees things in an analytical manner. As a result, we usually come home, process the image – whether from the film process or a digital processed image – and what we see is a little similar to what happens in the proof print when we originally saw the image. I see it a lot, where the concept was strong, but not execution. So let me present some ideas why this can happen.
There are five things that we should know about light: quantity, quality, direction, spread and color. Allow me to explain.
amount
Almost everyone understands the light volume. And while the human eye is very unable to identify the actual amount of light available, we have light meters for that purpose. Most modern cameras have an underlying light meter with a computer that will give you the required accurate information to determine the settings of your camera to get an image with the optimal exposure. Not only this, but digital cameras have a facility that is not available to those of us who use the film. This feature is a histogram, and it is an invaluable tool that I think very few photographers think – and its low use.
quality
Basically there are two properties of light: specular and spread. The more specular a light source is, the faster the penmbra will be. In other words, if the edge defined by the shadow is too fast, the light is specular. And we imagine that being high opposite. Typically, the specular light originates from a small light source; In fact, the smaller the light source, the more specular the light is. A good example of this would be that if you were standing directly in the desert in New Mexico in the afternoon on the day of July 1, the sun is not cloudy with the overhead directly and for a hundred miles in any direction. Another example is being illuminated by a single source light at a great distance which may stand in a performance stage. Specular lights are rigid in its quality and can be very difficult to manage, although some great masters of photography have used it for great advantage. Think about George Hurl or Yusuf Karsha’s work. Both used very small and intense studio lights to illuminate their subjects.
The next quality of light is to spread. Diffuse light is characterized by a large light source. Typically, it is a very easy source of light to work, and there are people who have made a career to use that quality of light. My friend John Sexton has a coffee table book of his work in which all pictures were made using only defuse lights. In your book Cool light, He used photographs that were exposed almost in particular, in the sun in the sun or after the civil sunset.
In my studio practice, I almost always used a mild diffuser who was 48 “x48”, so it was very large – thus providing a soft light quality.
This was my most used light source, especially for portrait work. Using it allowed me to work very quickly and accurately.
Diffuse lights are characterized by softness – the larger the light source, the more the quality of light will have to be spread. It is characterized by a soft delimitation between shade regions and highlight areas. The guide theory is that such as – as the relative size of the picture of the light source increases, softened – or excessive spread – the quality of light will become. On the other hand, the small light source becomes relative to the object, which is being painted, will be the quality of rigid and more specular light. In a real sense, a small camera-borne flash has very little effect in addition to cutting the amount of light emanating from the flash unit in addition to a diffuser. So all those foolish small toys that buy on-camera flash are just a mechanism to give you relief from your hard-earned shekel. All needs to convert a specular light source into a spread is to keep any type of spread panel between the light source and the subject or reflect light from the light source from the light source.
When I worked as a big set studio, such as automotive photography, I will take very large pieces of clothes – we are talking about the feet of the clothes, not in the inch – put them in front of a light bank, and then move the car or motorcycle until I found the reflection pattern, which I was looking for. BTW, it was not practical to move the lights because they were tied to a permanent position in the building. I remember on an assignment I was taking a picture of an AC Ford Cobra, and I had 20 electronic flash heads in a light bank, suspended above the floor from a roof of about 7 feet. I wanted the light to be longer than the vehicle than three or four feet and the bus was much higher than the car so that it would not infiltrate the image. On another example, I was taking a picture of a Yamaha dirt bike, and he was sitting on the floor close to the light bank bike, but off-camera. It was 4 feet 8 feet, so these were very large light banks – which were Ezir to move the object than transferring light sources. The object had to obtain an unbreakable highlight reflection for a long time, describing the contour of the vehicle.
Defense lights, in my experience, if you are taking a picture of the landscape, the easiest light quality to work too. So, how does it work, because the sun’s disc is about 2/3 inches, whether you are on the planet, or the day of the day, or the day of the day, because the sun’s disc is determined by its distance from the Earth? What happens is that at sunrise or sunset, the light from the sun will be reflected outside the sky in front of the sun. During pre-surisse, sunlight exits above the earth’s atmosphere and reflects what you are painting to illuminate it.
In this picture, Cannon Ball Consort, Teddy Roosevelt National Park, Suraj had not yet cleaned the horizon above this ridge, so even if there were no clouds in any direction, the quality of light had spread a lot. A few minutes later, the scene was a visual mess, and I do not bother to get my camera out of my backpack. Therefore, this type of light is always available after pre-east or post-source. Spreading other times will be for light landscape or outdoor photographer if the cloud covered; And in my experience, it will allow a photographer to work easily until the cloud cover remains.
Direction
The direction of light will allow you to organize your picture in a way that is making you happy. Pay full attention to the direction of light. It is the direction of light that gives dimensions and shape, as well as a sense of texture and depth for your photo. This seems to be a very clear factor, and yet as I look at people’s pictures, it becomes clear that either a lot of photographers are unaware of its importance or they do not know how to use it.
Here is an image that I did for a bride many years ago, using the quality and direction of light to show the details of her grand wedding dress on her wedding day.
To cover this subject from the way of cerving, and because I believe it is one of the most essential subjects that a photographer needs to understand, I will need to divide it into two writing.
So yes – this light is stupid! Whatever we do is only a record of how light interacts with the world in front of our lens. Whether it is soft and immersed or sharp and specular, whether it is inside the overhead or gently shining from the horizon, light is the right subject of every image we created. Specialist photography means not only learning to see objects in front of us, but to really look at light- its direction, its quality, its volume, its spread and its color. Understanding these elements does not help us take better pictures; This helps to tell us better stories. Finally, it is not the camera, lens, or even subject that defines a great picture – it is light. Always light.
