On Light

01/20/2025

TL;DR:

The quality of light will have the biggest impact of the mood in your photos.

Light is essential for photography. In fact, the word photography means painting with light. Light is wonderful to work with. It doesn’t smell, leaves no dust, and requires no cleanup. It can be a gorgeous component of your photographs and set the general mood and feeling for scenes and photo opportunities. And yet, some photographers can be a little scared by the concept when they start out. I was too, I admit. What helped me greatly was when someone broke it down for me so I could deal with light properties one at a time, wrap my head around them, and figure out how to use each of them. I hope it’ll help you as well.

Light has 4 properties:

Quantity

The quantity of light is just about how much light is available. We use the camera controls of shutter speed, aperture, and ISO to set the camera for the available light in the location where we’re shooting.

Quality

The quality of light deals with how soft or hard your light is. It goes like this:

A small light source and a large subject will result in hard light.

A large light source and a small subject will result in soft light.
The quality of light is, in my opinion, the most important property to manage when taking photos. When you have an unfavorable light quality, the other properties are meaningless. That photo is not going to work. Look for the right light quality first. And then remember: even when your light quality is what you’re hoping for, you still have to manage the others to get a decent photograph. 

Direction 

The direction of light is based on where the light is coming from to the subject, as seen from the camera's position.

Color 

The color of light depends on the light source. The sun is yellowish, light bulbs are orange, fluorescent light is slightly greenish, and so forth. You should set your camera’s white balance setting to correspond with the light source you’re using.

How to use this information:

We set the camera to the quantity and color of light using exposure settings and the white balance setting. What is left is the quality of light and the direction. These are essential for the artistic feel of your photos and what we should be paying attention to, mostly.

The quality of light, essentially the difference between soft (diffused) and hard (direct) light, sets the mood of our photos. For portraits, peaceful landscapes, and serene scenes, softer light is often appropriate and more harmonious with the subject matter. You may find that a softer light is generally what you’re looking for in 95% of the cases unless you’re a street photographer. Street photography can benefit significantly from hard lighting. 

We love being outside when it’s sunny and warm, relishing the lovely weather. The lighting on such days will be hard light, and depending on what you’re photographing, you may not like the high contrast and harsh shadows. Photographing on overcast days or taking photos early in the morning or towards the evening gives you a softer light. That “golden hour” light around sunrise and sunset can also add a lovely warmth to your photos.

If you find yourself outdoors for a portrait session on a bright and sunny day, look for spots that shade your subject and the background. That way, the light on your subject will be softer and better balanced with the light on the background.

If you’re doing street photography, you may be looking for scenes that offer the harder light and glitziness quite often found right after a rain shower. You’ll find deep black pavements with areas reflecting colorful advertising lights to set your scene. Now, you need to look for how all these lights and shadows shape your frame, showcasing your subject(s) dramatically.  

On to the direction of light:

The direction in which the light falls onto the subject depends on the camera position. If you photograph a portrait, you can change the camera position to change the direction of light.  

For portraits, there are 2 lighting directions to avoid. One is ghoul lighting, which you get if the light source is below the subject, lighting up. The telltale is that if the nose's bottom is brighter than the top, you have ghoul lighting. The second one isn’t that dramatic, maybe more of a preference. If the light falls on your subject from the same direction from which you’re taking the photo, that’s front lighting. We generally try to avoid that, but I’m finding, depending on your subject and the scene, it’s often not the end the world.

If you want to learn more about lighting and how it affects your photos, look into our Photography-1 through 3 courses and workshops. Lighting is usually a big part of any portrait-related course or workshop.

Choosing the Best Lens for Your Camera

12/12/2024

If you have a DSLR camera, then you have a lens that can be removed and swapped out for a different lens. This is awesome ... and maybe overwhelming, if you don't know exactly what you're looking for when you lens shop. 

The biggest way in which lenses differ is their focal length. Focal length is measured in millimeters. A zoom lens will say something like 28-105mm F/4.5-5.6. The bigger the focal length number, the more 'zoomed in' the image will look. While a 6mm lens may show the tips of your shoes, a 300mm lens would be capable of showing a close-up of an eagle a half a mile away in the sky.

Choosing the right focal length lens means thinking about what kind of photography you plan to do, because different focal lengths are suited to different purposes. Here are some quick guidelines (along with my personal favorites) that may help make lens selection a bit easier for you.

A 14-20mm lens is great for photographing the Milky Way. My go-to is the 14mm.

A 20-40mm lens is best for capturing stunning landscape images. I prefer a 24mm lens for this.

A 40-60mm lens is great for street photography. I choose a 50mm lens when I'm doing this type of photography.

A 100-200mm lens is the right choice for beautiful portraits. I like a 135mm lens, myself.

And finally, anything greater than a 200mm lens is what you want for sports and wildlife. I choose a 600mm lens for this.

Lenses that do not zoom — and therefore have a fixed focal length — are called prime lenses. A prime lens will have its focal length printed on it in millimeters, just like a zoom lens, but you’ll only see a single mm number rather than a range. 

Really good lenses are usually prime lenses. Since they only have one focal length, they can be made to take an optimal image all the way across the field of view, whereas zoom lenses need to work with a range of focal lengths, so the manufacturing cannot be quite as precise. Prime lenses have been the greatest source of joy in my endeavors as a photographer. Whenever I overspent on a prime lens, I fretted about it for a while until I got to know the lens, which usually took a while. But then, they often surprised me with the sheer beauty of their performance. Go try one if you have the chance.

Whether you’re talking prime or zoom, lenses are made out of glass or, in the case of cheaper ones, out of plastic, and they bend light beams. Here is the thing though: you can bend light, but you cannot trick physics.

While lens manufacturers will cite all kinds of specs and curves to show you how the lens will perform, there two numbers that can tell you most reliably how good a picture the lens will take: 

1) The weight: Usually, the heavier a lens you are holding in your hand, the better a photo it will take. That's because glass is heavier than plastic and the more glass is used inside of a lens, the better the photo will be. Lens manufacturers try to keep lenses light and only put in the glass they absolutely need.

2) The price: The better a lens, the higher the price will be. While the specs and curves may shed some light on the performance of a lens system for an expert in reading this sort of data, the lens manufacturers themselves will know very well how good a lens they just made. And they will not discount their expertise, in my experience.

Here's a bonus pro tip: when you're swapping out lenses, make sure you hear the "click" that tells you the lens is properly seated to the camera body. Otherwise, you may hear the crash of breaking glass, and that is a sound no photographer wants to hear after investing in a nice lens. And make no mistake, lenses are an investment, albeit one that can be very worthwhile. This is a case where you very much get what you pay for, and it's worth doing some research and then investing in the best lens you can afford that suits the type of photography you want to do.

A Word or Two About Lens Hoods

12/12/2024

You’ll find when you go to purchase a lens for your camera that many lenses come with a contraption that is designed to be attached to the front of the lens. That is the lens hood. (Some lenses, especially if the lens needs to meet a lower price point, do not have it included anymore. Which may go to show that you get what you pay for.)

I frequently get asked by my students when they should use a lens hood. The answer is simple: Always! Let me explain.

If you shoot in an environment where you have full control over light and lighting, a lens hood might not be vital. But it’s rare to encounter such a highly controlled situation, and  when you don’t have full control, the lens hood can be your best friend.  Lens flare — which is what it’s called when you see multiple reflections of a light source repeated over your image — can ruin a photo. Because it prevents stray light from entering your lens,  a lens hood helps with that. 

If a light source is close to the field of view — that is, the area where you are pointing your camera — stray light can make your photo look washed out. A lens hood helps with that. 

Unless the light source is right behind you and there are no reflective surfaces in front of you, it is a good idea to have the hood on your lens.

But wait, there's more. The lens hood will also protect the front end of the lens from scratches and mechanical encounters. Some stores will try to sell you a UV filter for lens protection, and that works somewhat. I find that the hood is a much better protector and often a lot less money. On modern cameras, a UV filter has very little impact on the image quality, while a properly used lens hood can definitely improve your photo quality.

Sometimes people get overwhelmed by the many different styles of lens hoods that are available and wonder which one to choose. The answer here is also pretty simple. Choose the hood your lens manufacturer recommends for your particular lens. Unless the hood you are using is tested with your lens, you may not be happy with the results you get. An inappropriate lens hood can do one of two things: 

1) It can restrict the field of view and turn the corners of your photo dark. This is called vignetting. 

2) It can fail to block the light entering your lens enough, making the hood ineffective.

If you do opt for (or already own) a lens that doesn’t come with a lens hood, I strongly recommend buying one. You can probably  figure out what to buy by harnessing the power of the internet. Go to the lens manufacturer’s web site and find your lens. In the technical data section, they often mention the type and number for the perfect lens hood to use with your lens. Then it is just a question of contacting your preferred camera gear vendor. They should be able to help you from there.

Who would have thought that the innocent-looking lens hood would have such profound effects? But then, if it were not necessary, the lens manufacturers would not spend the money and include them with most of the lenses you can buy. Right?

And there’s one more little tip that may make your use of a lens hood less cumbersome. I’ve sometimes found that people object to using one because having it attached to the camera makes the lens longer and therefore harder to store in your camera bag. Here’s the solution to that dilemma:

When you are through shooting, you can pop the lens hood off, flip it over, and put it back over your lens for storage. Now it doesn’t take up any additional room, and, as a bonus, it will always be right there for you the next time you use your camera.

When (and Why) to Try Auto-Exposure Compensation

12/11/2024

One of the things we talk about a lot in photography is exposure — that is, how light or dark your photo is. The camera’s shutter speed, aperture and ISO settings are all factors in how bright your photo will be. When you use your camera in manual mode, you can adjust all those settings yourself. That gives you a great deal of control, but it also takes time and practice to get really good at managing all of that, and so sometimes other modes of the camera are more convenient.

When you use your camera in program, shutter priority or aperture priority modes, or even in manual mode with auto-ISO, it typically does a pretty decent job of reading the light and metering accordingly to give you a properly exposed photo. One that is not too dark, not too light, but just right. 

There are some lighting situations, though, where your artistic vision and your camera's directive to meter every scene to a happy medium might be at odds. Think about a snowy winter scene, for example -- or a lovely white-sand beach, if you aren't quite ready for wintery thoughts. Chances are, if that's what you're photographing, you want to capture the brilliance of the sun on the reflective foreground. Your camera, however, will read that light as too bright and meter down. And the resulting image will be disappointingly dark. 

What can be done? The answer is Auto Exposure Compensation -- aka AEC. AEC allows you to push the exposure based on the camera's metering, making things brighter or darker. You can adjust the exposure in 1/3 f-stops up to +3 or down to -3.

Let's look at an example to give you an idea of when (and why) you might want to use AEC:

Here is an image from our Xtreme Wildlife Photography field trip to Africa a few years ago. I would call this overexposed. The grassland in the foreground looks OK, but the sky is blown out. Most of the detail in the clouds is lost. 

Below we have the same scene metered appropriately -- at least according to the camera. By appropriately, I mean that the camera's light meter was at 0. The camera read the whole scene, decided which of those colors should be the median value, and metered accordingly.

Better! The grassland may look a little dark, but the sky isn't so blindingly white that you lose the details, and the drama of the dark clouds is more prominent. The viewer's eye is drawn into the scene, right to that gap in the clouds, which is probably the most interesting part of the photo, anyway. You could call it a day here and be pretty happy with the image you captured. 

I don't think it's gone far enough, though, if what you really wanted to show was the gorgeous rays of sunshine pouring out of that gap in the threateningly dark clouds. So let's see what happens when you use AEC to force the camera to underexpose the scene:

Well! Now you've really got something. Lots of drama, lots more detail in the clouds, and the crepuscular rays of sun are visible all the way across the image. To me, this image truly captures the vastness of the plain, the oppressive heaviness of the storm clouds, and the awe of seeing the sun break through. And it would not have been captured if not for using AEC to override the camera's exposure setting. 

Hopefully, you can begin to see how exposure setting can be an artistic choice and why you might want to use AEC sometimes to get the effect you’re hoping for in a photo.

If you'd like to learn more about Auto Exposure compensation -- among many other things -- we go into it in depth in the second class of our Photography 3 course.