Continuing my exploration of things that get repeated week on week in the Critique Gallery. This entry will be a bit shorter because the message is simple and clear-cut.
The word *photography means drawing with light. Photography is all about light, it depends on light. Light creates the image.
Observe light, study it, understand it, treat it with respect, try to work with it not against it. Photography starts to get exciting when you move away from just looking at the subject, start looking at what light does to it.
To pick up on one of those points – Treat light with respect. Do you remember the story of the LPOTY winner who was disqualified after the results had been announced, when someone spotted the rather obvious fact that the light and shadows in the foreground of the image didn't match up with the light in the sky? It became known as the 'two suns' landscape. That's what you risk if you don't show respect. (Story here – I don't like the Mail but it does give the best explanation I could find on line).
Look at how light catches and defines edges, how it works with shadow to show up contours and textures, to give depth.
Low, side-lighting will create that effect most easily. That's why early morning and late afternoon / early evening are so popular – and not just for landscapes. Low light shows up every detail, every texture. It explains the attraction of photographing old cemeteries, all those curving, carved stone edges that gain drama when low light catches them.
Light behind the subject is much harder to manage but can give spectacular effects. Rim lighting, silhouettes...
Overhead light – I avoid it if I can... It's both harsh and boring. Midday is for lunch not photography. (OK, That's a challenge, now prove me wrong... )
As an experiment, find an interesting object – a sculpture is ideal, a vase, ornament or cut crystal glass would be good. Put it on a table in a totally dark room, shine a torch on it from a few feet away. Move round it, vary the angle and height of the torch, watch how the effects change... Then look out for opportunities to use those angles in real life.
*As a footnote: Sir John Herschel coined the word photography in 1839, to describe the new medium.
Around twenty one years later he came up with another new term, snapshot. Yes it really is that old! It marked the fact that technical advances had allowed photography to move out of the studio (ten minute exposures, subjects' heads held in a brace to keep them still) and into the real world. Cameras now worked with the speed of a pistol, and the shutter snapped the shot.
Photographers could now capture subjects such as wildlife – humane, creative shooting. Which is why I always find it funny when wildlife photographers decry other genres as 'mere snapshots'. For me it's a totally positive term, it means freezing a moment in time.
(By the way, in something over eight years on the site this week is my first excursion into the blogs and I really don't know how this side of the site works. So if there's someone actually looking in, Hi! And thanks for your time... )
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