Light is your subject
You can’t pick it up. You can’t bump into it. You can’t give it a cuddle – light is intangible. But to take great photographs you need to start thinking of light as an object – an object with the elusive power of a shapeshifter.
Everything is at the mercy of light. What’s arresting one minute can leave no impression the next, simply because of a change in the light. The mundane can become beautiful and the beautiful, mundane. Just look at the light in this image by Tom Hunter. What mood is it creating?
Whether you have your camera with you or not, the only way to learn about light is to observe it constantly.
When you’re sitting at your desk, walking down the street or driving your car, ask yourself, ‘how is the light affecting the space and atmosphere around me?’ Notice how it draws out textures, colour and detail. How it attracts your attention to a specific point within a scene. How it gives a space depth or makes it seem absolutely flat.
But with all its infinite forms and variations, light can be split into two fundamental types – hard and soft. Both have particular traits that affect the overall mood of your image. In this chapter we’re going to start by comparing and contrasting some of the most common.