Light

I am going to be posting some tips about photography here as well as sharing photos. I love to help explain things to people and I'm always excited to share what I know with anyone who is interested.

     Photography is all about capturing light. It is light that bounces off things and give them color. It is light that falls on parts of the face to give it shape, and conversely it is the shadows in contrast to the light that define the shape of anything. A larger and closer light source will produce softer shadows. The sun is a small light source since it is very far away, producing hard (sharply defined and dark) shadows. Conversely, when you are looking into the shade (watch for sun patches if the shade is produced by a tree) the light is very soft because the actual light source is the sky, rather than the sun. Other good places for soft light are north facing windows, or anywhere on a cloudy day.
     Look at the direction of the light. If you are in a walled yard, the light is going to come from above, producing shadows in the eyes (if you are photographing a person). If you have an opening in front of a person, the light is lower and thus the direction of the light is more pleasing. One mistake I see a lot, is the use of the flash on the camera. It produces very flat light, produces red-eye (caused by the light bouncing off the retinas and returning directly to the camera), and dark shadows directly behind people. My tip, disable the flash, and instead look for good light. Soft, directional light coming from an angle will not produce the red eyes and will make much softer shadows.

Here is a photo I took this week of my daughter. I'm impressed with the high ISO capability of my camera. Most cameras couldn't do this with such little light. The higher the ISO setting, the more light sensitive is the sensor in the camera. However, the picture gets grainier and grainier looking the higher the ISO. Here my camera is set at 6400 ISO, aperture of f/2, shutter speed of 1/100 second. I was using a 135mm lens. The relatively slow shutter speed required me to hold the camera as still as possible (so you wouldn't get blurring) so I was braced in a nearby doorway. The sun had just set, and her face was lit by a northwest facing window. The stairwell was behind her (you can see the bars of the railing faintly) and there is an orange light coming up from below. Note the light of normal light bulbs is pretty yellow as compared to regular daylight. I love the shallow depth of field and colors in this picture.