Let’s continue our exploration of seeing the light.
Soft Light = Easy Exposures
In this picture of a Taraino woman that I photographed in Brazil, there are no strong highlights or shadows in the picture. The light is soft, making for a relatively easy automatic exposure. I like photographing when the light is soft, created by an overcast sky or diffused natural or flash lighting
Let’s take a look at the different types of lighting and how they affect a photograph.
Front Lighting
Front lighting is nice for portraits when you want the subject’s face evenly illuminated, as was the case when I photographed my guide in Viet Nam. This is another example of an easy automatic exposure.
Overcast Lighting
Overcast lighting is perfect for portraits of animals and people – because harsh shadows are eliminated by clouds. The soft light makes for somewhat soft images.
Backlighting
Backlighting creates dramatic silhouettes, as illustrated by this cowboy’s picture that I took in Oregon. How cool is that! And speaking of backlighting, here’s a photography joke: Someone asks a pro, “What is your day rate?” He replies, “$5,000, but it is $7,500 if I have to shoot into the sun.” The point of the joke is that it’s harder to shoot into the sun than away from it.
Soft Side Lighting
Soft side lighting makes for more dramatic pictures than those taken on overcast days. Pictures also appear sharper, due to the increased contrast range. In this leopard photograph, taken in Botswana, you can see every whisker on the animal’s face. I used a –1 exposure compensation setting for this automatic exposure.
Strong Side Lighting
Strong side lighting can be nice, but you need to be careful that the subject’s face is not hidden in a shadow, as is the case with this photograph taken of a lioness after a kill on an African safari. The harsh light makes this picture an “outtake” in my book (actually on my PowerBook G4). No amount of exposure compensation could save this shot.
Strong Top Lighting
Strong top lighting is the worst, and I mean the worst, for portraits. Avoid it at all costs – unless you can control the natural light. I photographed this man in Papua New Guinea to illustrate that point. This image is also an “outtake” that cannot be saved. However, a diffuser or a flash, which helps us control the light, would have reduced the contrast range in the scene and saved the shot.
Soft Top Lighting
Soft top lighting, which illuminated my friend Chandler at Jungle World at the Bronx Zoo in New York, is not as bad as strong top lighting and can easily be fixed. See the next example.
Soft top lighting can be helped by simply asking the subject to look upward. Now that was easy.
Bottom Lighting
Bottom light, also known as Halloween light, casts unflattering shadows on a subject’s face. In this image, taken near Lake Powell, Arizona, a reflector was held below the subject, bouncing unflattering light from a low angle. This is another lighting effect you should try to avoid, unless you are taking pictures for October 31st.
In addition to learning how to see the light, we also need to learn how to see the brightness and intensity of the subject, because they also effects the exposure. That comes in our next Mpix blog.
Rick Sammon
www.ricksammon.com