Ever since the first caveman picked up a piece of charcoal and drew a rough sketch of what they saw around them, mankind has been trying to capture the world around them. As anyone who has taken an art history class knows, the evolution from hunting scenes on cave walls to modern abstract art has taken us through tremendous changes, both in methods of creating images, as well as subject matters and even religious iconography.
Today, we stand at an exciting time in our evolution, with many different tools available to us with which we can record for posterity who we were, what we did and what we cared about.
photo by thart2009 [1]
Ever since fearless inventors discovered that silver compounds combined with chalk would darken when exposed to light, photography has been a favourite method of recording everyday scenes. As many know, those early devices were quite crude by today’s standards. Not only did they take hours to record an image on a silver plate, but they only were able to reproduce items in black and white.
Still, at the time, it must have been an absolutely astounding procedure. Fast-forward to today, and we even have high quality cameras installed on smartphones.
Why Are You Taking the Picture?
The proliferation of high-powered, yet inexpensive cameras, including those installed in modern smartphones and tablets, has created a virtually unlimited catalogue of images, many of which find their way onto the Internet, via photo sharing sites or even social media platforms such as Facebook.
The reasons why photographs are taken are as varied as the social settings and motivations behind the picture itself. For the social gathering and late-night party crowd, a quick snapshot of a group of friends, taken with a straight-on flash is often more than sufficient. For those who want to take more time and effort into producing a quality image, more attention to detail and arguably more sophisticated equipment is required.
The Renaissance Redux
The idea that light could play an important part in the emotional and artistic value of a picture really came to the forefront during the Renaissance, when artists became suddenly unshackled from the boundaries of Church dogma and were allowed to experiment with a wide variety of techniques.
Even some of the early icons of modern photography, such as Alfred Stieglitz [2] or Ansel Adams [3] recognized that lighting was a basic component of any successful photograph [4], on par with composition and exposure. In the early days of photography, the only way to leverage the power of proper lighting was to go outdoors and find the right setting to accomplish what one wanted.
With advances in technology, much of that effort was brought indoors and tightly controlled. Anyone who has witnessed a studio shoot for a product or a modeling session can recognize the amount of sophistication that goes into the setup of the shoot and the sheer amount of equipment involved.
The Four Cardinal Points of Lighting
Even today, with all of our sophisticated camera equipment, proper lighting techniques break down into two basic environments: indoors and outdoors. Each has its own challenges and each needs to be approached in a slightly different way. Let’s start with outdoor scenes.
Leveraging the Great Outdoors
For simplicity sake, we can break down outdoor photography shooting into two basic categories: landscapes, including outdoor scenes and portraits.
Landscapes and outdoor scenes
The final result will largely depend on whether the sun is out and what time of day it is.
- Early morning and late afternoon, when the sun is either rising or setting, provides for a warm tone, including a fairly dramatic lighting effect, as the sun light is coming from a sharp angle. Shooting during these hours can produce pictures that have a very distinct tone and strong visual impact.
- Midday, when the sun is at its zenith, will bathe the entire scene in light, assuming no clouds are present and will provide a well illuminated but fairly uniform effect on the subject. Depending on the result that one is trying to achieve, either approach is perfectly valid: one just needs to recognize the different outcomes.
- On overcast or cloudy days: while there may be plenty of light available, color saturation will not be as intense or dramatic as during a sunny day. Depending on the effect desired, this could actually be used to one’s advantage. If the sun happens to peek out from behind some clouds, the rays that project onto the landscape can be captured for dramatic effect.
Taking portraits outdoors
There are a great many situations where the natural lighting that one finds the doors during the daytime is more than sufficient to create a great portrait. There are really two basic directions from which lighting can come from: in front of the subject, or behind it.
- Most people prefer to have the lighting source, (the sun) behind them. This way, the subject can be fully illuminated and the results can be quite pleasing. As most people know, it’s important not to let the subject look directly into the sun, which will typically cause them to squint.
- In the event the sun is directly overhead, it could cast a shadow over the person. One way to solve this is to take a portrait under a tree, where sunlight may be interspersed and create a very pleasing effect. Alternatively, one could use a fill-in flash, which is a burst from the camera’s built-in flash, but at reduced power.
- In the event there is a particularly interesting background that one wants to capture, subjects can also be placed with the sun directly behind them. In these cases however, there needs to be a delicate balance between exposure and lighting. If the picture is overexposed to properly show the subject, the background will be typically washed out. If the background is properly exposed, the subject will be mostly dark. The solution is once again to use the camera’s fill-in flash feature, which will allow the background to be properly exposed and yet provide sufficient illumination for the subject.
Taking It Indoors
There are only two basic ways to approach the subject: professional or amateur. As most of us are amateurs, there is really no need to go into great detail about the professional set up required to take studio-quality pictures.
However, if you want to take pictures with the flash capabilities of your camera, a little extra effort and expense can yield tremendously improved results. As most modern point-and-shoot cameras have a built-in flash that allows for very little control, except for the ability to reduce redeye, we have to look at the more expensive and sophisticated digital SRL’s for alternative solutions.
The flash of practically any point and shoot camera faces only forwards, basically blasting their subject with light which will yield fairly flat results. To achieve more definition and truly create an atmosphere around a portrait or a picture of a group of people, the flash has to be set off at an angle.
- An external flash that can sync directly with the camera can be pointed to one side, or even directly away from the subject, as long as there is a white reflective background that will bounce the flash’s illumination back towards the subject. Alternatively, one can carry with them a small but effective flash umbrella, which can be mounted with the external flash to create just the desired effect, at the desired angle.
- With this external flash and umbrella solution, one can experiment with various angles, such as positioning the flash at a 45° angle to the subject to achieve excellent results.