Light is what the exposure settings work to capture. On the sensor, the light’s photons are translated to electronic signals that are processed and recorded as image files. This file is then used either to control the software in a printer and reproduce the image as a print—or to control the pixels of a monitor and display the image there. In either case, what we are perceiving with our eyes are regenerated photons (bounced off a print or emitted by a monitor) that resemble the photons that entered that camera in the first place. Certainly our brains play along with that regeneration: photos of Tom Cruise do look like Tom Cruise himself; on a postcard, a print of the Eiffel Tower looks like the Eiffel Tower as seen in Paris.
“The role of light in photography goes beyond merely allowing us to capture and share a recognizable subject.”
However, the role of light in photography goes beyond merely allowing us to capture and share a recognizable subject. How viewers respond emotionally to the scene or subject depicted by the photographer depends heavily on the characteristics of the lighting in the image. Furthermore, various lighting conditions also call for different approaches to exposure control. Keeping that in mind, lighting should be a conscious choice for photographers. We observe it, analyze it, modify it, generate it—and ultimately decide if we will use it. We are the masters of light, not the other way around.
So the next time your photos do not look good enough, don’t blame it on the light.
When I was fifteen years old, I borrowed a flute from a friend in order to photograph it. Hastily, I put it on a desk under a fluorescent light and an incandescent light bulb, then clicked the shutter. After whatever the lab did to “correct” the color, my print of the flute reflected orange and blue glare—and my reaction included both enlightenment and surprise. It was a good lesson about the color of light, but also that there is nothing right or wrong about most things in photography. I knew I made a “mistake,” but I liked the outcome!
Around us, the color of light differs greatly. The majority of the color variations are shifts between yellow and blue—a variation that is good for photographers because this is a range that is easy to adjust and manipulate. It is also the range our digital cameras (or film) assume we will be operating within. Image 4-1 represents this variation across the visible light spectrum. The color of light is measured in Kelvin (K) degrees and referred as the light’s color temperature.
Image 4-1. The color temperatures of common light sources and situations.
Color Temperature
Color temperature is a measure of light’s color and is measured in degrees Kelvin. The higher the number, the bluer (cooler) the color; the lower the number, the yellower (warmer) the color.
Kelvin
The Kelvin is a unit of measurement named for British physicist William Kelvin. When Kelvin heated a block of carbon, he discovered that it glowed in the heat, producing a range of different light colors at different temperatures. The black cube (or “black body,” as it is often called) first produced a dim red light, then increased to a brighter yellow as the temperature went up—and eventually produced a bright blue/white glow at the highest temperatures. Today, color temperatures are measured in degrees Kelvin, which are a variation on Centigrade degrees.
The left side of the chart marks how the color of sunlight differs under different circumstances. The sun’s thermonuclear reaction doesn’t change (not in our lifetime, anyway!), but the transmission of its light through our atmosphere can shift its color by the time it reaches our subjects. Fact one: our air scatters blue light (that is why the sky is blue). Fact two: sunlight comes to us both directly (when there is nothing between the sun and the object it lights) and indirectly (when the object is under a shadow but still lit by the sunlight). Either of these circumstances, as well as any variations in the material diffusing or reflecting the sunlight, will shift the color of the lighting on the subject.
Diffusion
The use of a translucent (not transparent) substance to scatter direct light rays. This has the effect of softening harsh light.
Practical Example: Cellist in a Red Dress
For a sequence of images to illustrate this phenomenon, I photographed a cellist in a red dress. In image 4-2, you see the three settings where I photographed her: in direct sunlight, under a cloudy sky, and under a shadow. The full spectrum of light enters the atmosphere from the sun, but I have simplified the diagram to show just the yellow and blue. When sunlight travels through the air, the blue wavelengths are heavily scattered and the yellow wavelengths are slightly scattered. Diffusion and shade cause the blue waves to become more predominant.
Image 4-2. Our cellist model, illustrated in three lighting scenarios. Turn to the next page to see the photos from these three different lighting situations.
Image 4-3. Direct sunlight is heavier on the yellow tones. (Camera white balance setting 5450K)
Image 4-4. Under a cloudy sky, the light color shifts toward the blues. (Camera white balance setting 5450K)
Image 4-5. In the shade, the light goes even more blue. (Camera white balance setting 5450K)
Image 4-3 shows the subject in direct sunlight. While the full spectrum of light reaches the subject, the sunlight is heavier on the yellow. As a result, her skin tones are slightly yellowish and her dress appears as saturated red. Image 4-4 was taken in a partly cloudy condition, which made the light color shift slightly toward blue. Accordingly, her skin tones are more neutral and the red dress does not look quite as red as in the previous image. Image 4-5 was shot in the shade of a building. Only scattered light reached that spot, making the light shift quite blue. This can be observed in her skin tones and the red dress, which now appear darker and less saturated.
So how do we make sure the colors in our images consistently come out the way we want them to? We use the camera’s white balance setting, adjusting it (right along with our other exposure settings) to match the lighting conditions where we’re shooting. You can think of the white balance setting like an arrow pointing at a specific spot on the color temperature chart (image 4-1). This tells the camera how to neutralize any color shifts to ensure that neutral tones (white or gray) record as, well, colorless. When the white balance is set correctly, a white shirt will look like a white shirt—and all the objects of other colors will also be represented in truer colors.
Image 4-6. Shot at 4500K for the late afternoon sunlight.
Image 4-7. Shot at 5450K for the cloudy sky.
Look back at images 4-3, 4-4, and 4-5. For all of these shots, I left the camera’s white balance setting at 5450K. The light where I shot image 4-4 was actually very close to 5450K, making all the colors look “correct.” The light where I shot image 4-3 was warmer than 5450K (lower color temperature), so all of the colors appear more yellowish. The light for image 4-5 was cooler than 5450K (higher color temperature), so all the colors appear more bluish.
What if the white balance had been adjusted shot by shot and set correctly according to the color of light? Images 4-6, 4-7, and 4-8 demonstrate that. These were shot at 4500K (late afternoon sunlight), 5450K (partial clouds), and 7000K (shade) respectively. As you can see, the colors of the skin tone, the dress, and even the cello, are much more consistent—because I used the white balance setting to tell the camera exactly how to compensate for the shifting light colors.
White Balance
The use of the digital camera’s built-in firmware filters to compensate for color imbalances in lighting and provide a more accurate (neutral) representation of the colors in a scene/subject.
Image 4-8. Shot at 7000K for the shade.
Image 4-9. Typical white balance presets.
Do you have to know exactly the color temperature of the light you’re working in? No. Today’s digital cameras come with a range of handy presets that let you intuitively pair your white balance setting with the most common lighting conditions. Image 4-9 shows the typical white balance presets found on digital cameras. These symbols for light sources are pretty much universal among the different brands (finally!). Each preset matches a different type of light source, as suggested by its name. Before shooting, simply pick the one that best matches the lighting conditions.
Obtain an 18 percent gray card and find a model to help you with this exercise. This model should be available to you at the shooting stage but also at the postproduction phase (so this may be a good time to enlist a family member). Have your model wear clothes with large blocks of color—something like Piet Mondrian’s abstract painting comes to mind. Photograph your model under the six different light sources listed in image 4-9: daylight, shade, cloudy, incandescent, fluorescent, and flash. For each shot, have the model hold the gray card as instructed above. In each lighting circumstance, take six bust shots of the model (including the gray card), one at each of the six different white balance settings. After making these six shots under each of six different light sources, you will have 36 different images. Compare the differences in skin tone, the color of the clothes, and the gray card. (Hold onto these files; we’re going to use them again for an exercise in chapter 6.)
Another option is to pick the automatic white balance setting and let the camera attempt to align its white balance to the current light source. The success of this will vary—and, even with the same lighting and subject, you can encounter substantial color shifts from shot to shot as you adjust your composition or zoom in/out. So, whether or not to use the automatic white balance setting, to me, depends on your ability to use Adobe Camera Raw (refer to chapter 6) in the postproduction phase. If you’re shooting in JPG format, adjusting the white balance setting at the time of capture is more important because color-balance errors are harder to fix after the fact. If you’re shooting in RAW processing your files with Camera Raw, it’s extremely simple to adjust the white balance in postproduction—and to apply that change in seconds to as many photos as you may have shot. This may sound odd, but setting the white balance on the camera is not quite as important if you know how to do it in Camera Raw.
An 18 percent gray card, available at any camera store, is a great tool for learning about white balance. A gray card has the ultimate colorless surface—it equally reflects light across the whole spectrum. When a gray card is photographed, it can be used as a precise and objective indicator of white balance. If the white balance is set correctly, the gray card will look absolutely neutral gray in the photograph. If the gray card has a color cast, you know that the white balance needs to be adjusted. When using a gray card in test shots, have the model hold it and face it toward the camera. Looking through the viewfinder, if you see any glare on the card, ask the model to change its angle slowly until the glare disappears.
“How can a photographer hope to reinvigorate interest in well-traveled, well-photographed scenes? The use and control of light quality is one of the most powerful tools.”
The Quality of Light: Harsh vs. Soft
In an era where everyone can travel everywhere, there is hardly anything a photographer can present in a photo that is truly novel. Whether its the Half Dome at Yosemite or the Eiffel Tower in Paris, there’s nothing much new in terms of subject matter. So how can a photographer hope to reinvigorate interest in these well-traveled, well-photographed scenes? The use and control of light quality—whether it appears harsh or soft—is one of the most powerful tools.
Several factors contribute to this quality, the size of light being one of them. Image 4-10 illustrates this phenomenon with a sphere and a small light bulb. When the sphere is lit directly by the small bulb, the light strikes the sphere from a single point, so any given spot on the sphere is definitively lit or unlit; it is either in the light or in the shadow. There is nothing in between; there is literally no “gray area.”
Now consider what happens when a diffuser, a translucent (but not transparent) material, is placed between the light bulb and the sphere. The diffuser obstructs the direct light and spreads it out; from the subject’s perspective, the much larger diffuser becomes the light source—and one that is much larger than the light bulb. The point on the sphere that is closest to the light gets lit by the whole diffuser. The more distant points are exposed to less of the diffuser and receive somewhat less light. Finally, the surfaces on the opposite end of the sphere remain unexposed to any part of light source and are, thus, still in shadow. What is important is the gradual change we now have in the middle. The highlight and the shadow areas are less sharply defined; there is now a lot of “gray area.”
Image 4-10. The size of the light relative to the subject determines how hard or soft the lighting will be.
Let’s look at an example using natural light. Basically, this means that the light bulb in image 4-10 is replaced by the sun and the diffuser is replaced by the cloudy sky. See image 4-11 for the illustration of this. Images 4-12 to 4-15 show this phenomenon at work. Frank Gehry (the famed architect of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and many other buildings known for their curved forms) designed the building featured in these images: Seattle’s Experience Music Project (EMP) Museum. Images 4-12 and 4-13 show the EMP under a cloudy sky; images 4-14 and 4-15 show the same structure under direct sunlight. As you can see, the harsh light defined the curvy surfaces much more definitively than the soft light. However, the hard light also produced much stronger highlights—so much so that quite a bit of highlight clipping has occurred (refer back to chapter 1). Still, in this case, the harsh light versions of the scene rank higher for me.
Image 4-11. Hard vs. soft lighting on a large building.
Images 4-12 and 4-13. The EMP under a cloudy sky.
“As you can see, the harsh light defined the curvy surfaces much more definitively than the soft light.”
TRY IT 
In the Footsteps of Monet
Between the summer of 1890 and the spring of 1891, Monet painted twenty-five paintings of haystacks. These beautiful studies of lighting portray a seemingly mundane subject at different time of day and in different seasons. Think about a few scenes that you can access continuously or at least from time to time—your favorite local building, your grandparents’ farm, or a sculpture in the park. Photograph this scene at different times of the day (or night), under different weather conditions, and in different seasons. The compositions don’t have to be consistent; strive to cash in on the current lighting in order to best portray the scene as it is at the moment. Pick your favorite ones and collect them in an album—whether on Facebook, Pinterest, or in a good old-fashioned, leather-bound book.
Images 4-14 and 4-15. The EMP under direct sunlight.
When photographing things as large as a building, the challenge is that your relationship to the light quality is rather passive. You can’t make the light harsh or soft—you have to wait for those circumstances to manifest themselves. With large, fixed subjects, the photographer’s best asset is patience and time.
When it comes to portraits, on the other hand, the situation is much more manageable. Because people are much smaller (and mobile!), you can position them in good light or modify the light much more proactively. That’s especially true if you work with an assistant and some basic light modifiers.
My 42-inch Westcott 4-in-1 light modifier kit is durable, versatile, and a perfect size for many applications. It also folds down into to a third of its size for easy storage and carrying. There are also small sizes (20 or 30 inches) that are more suitable for headshots, and larger sizes (50 or 72 inches) that can cover full-length and even group portraits.
Add a Diffuser to Soften the Light
Image 4-16 was photographed in a sunny afternoon, at around 3:00PM on a mild winter day. The sun was already low due to the season, so the light was rather directional (more in this later in the chapter). In this image, the sun was on the camera-right side of the shot. As you can see, the harsh direct light cast definitive shadow on my model’s face. The highlight on the left side of her face is verging into highlight clipping territory—so the harsh light is not just unflattering, it’s also causing some exposure concerns.
To soften the light, I pulled out a diffuser from my gear bag. This kind of pop-up diffuser folds into a small size for easy carrying. Image 4-17 shows how this was positioned to block the sun and placed it close to the subject. Why close? Remember: the size of the light is what makes it soft—and the closer the light source (now the diffuser) is to the subject, the larger it is relative to them. The catch is that using a diffuser like this generally requires an assistant. A very sturdy stand might do the job without falling over in the wind, but your mobility would be seriously compromised.
Image 4-18 shows the result of adding the diffuser. Compare it to image 4-16. Notice how the highlight now appear much milder; there is less clipping and more detail. The shadows are also less defined—especially the one cast by the nose. The lesson here? Soft light is generally more flattering than harsh light. (Interestingly, adding the diffuser also made it a lot easier for the subject to smile and strike a relaxed pose. That might seem off-topic for this book, but it’s an important technical consideration for shooting portraits. It is always important to be sympathetic with the person being photographed.)
Image 4-16. The harsh sunlight is unflattering and is causing some exposure concerns.
Add a Reflector for Fill Light
Another way to reduce the contrast of a portrait shot under a harsh light source is to add fill light, a secondary light source used to brighten the shadows. With the fill light, shadows are not as dark, so more details are revealed. The difference between the highlight and the shadow is also reduced, hence reducing the contrast.
Let’s consider another image shot under the same conditions as the previous sequence—but this time we’re going to control that same problematic contrast level by adding a reflector. You’ll recall that the diffuser was placed on the same side of the subject as the sun; to add fill light, a reflector needs to be placed on the opposite side of the subject, so it bounces light onto the side of the subject that is in shadow. Image 4-19 illustrates how the reflector was placed to create image 4-20 (previous page). Again, having an assistant is a necessary luxury. Notice how the shadow are lightened by the addition of the reflector. However, since the highlight is unchanged, this lighting solution does not soften the light as much. Using a reflector maintains the intensity better than the diffuser. Which approach is the better solution for your portraits depends on the look you have envisioned. (Also, be considerate and remind the model not to look directly into the reflector—it hurts!)
Images 4-17 and 4-18. Positioning the diffuser to soften the light produces a much more flattering image.
Images 4-19 and 4-20. Positioning the reflector for fill light. This controlled the contrast for a look that is more appealing than the harsh sunlight alone.
Diffuser
A translucent fabric panel or disc placed between the subject and the light source to diffuse (soften) the lighting.
Reflector
A white or metallic fabric panel or disc placed on the shadow side of the subject to bounce light into the shadow areas and lighten them. This reduces the contrast in the photo.
If you don’t have one yet, buy yourself a diffuser/reflector kit. Go to the park on a sunny day with your model and an assistant. Avoid shooting when the sun is high in the sky. During the hours when the sun is between its zenith and the horizon, using a reflector or a diffuser is ideal. (Note that I cannot suggest a specific hour of the day; the location of the sun in the sky depends on your latitude and the season. At high latitudes, the winter sun can linger at a moderate angle for many hours—there might not be any high sun at all. Near the tropics, on the other hand, sun dashes through the sky, sharply changing its angles through the hours and the seasons. This is something that should be factored into your session planning—especially when shooting in unfamiliar locations.)
With a subject, assistant, light modifiers, and the sun at an angle, the task is simple: photograph the subject using the reflector and the diffuser. Refer back to the images in the previous section for help in positioning the modifiers. Try taking multiple shots with some variations:
1. Change the distance between the diffuser/reflector and the subject.
2. Without changing the distance to the subject, experiment with moving the reflector along an arc around the subject. As you change the angle of the modifier relative to the subject, make sure that enough light is still being reflected onto the subject.
3. If your reflector comes in different colors or with different surface textures, try all of them.
4. Stack the diffuser on top of the reflector and use the stacked pair as a softer reflector.
Another quality that greatly affects our images is the direction from which the light falls on the scene or subject. In the studio, the direction of the light is simply controlled by positioning the light stand. In the great outdoors, we wait patiently for the sun to move to where we want it—or, with portraits, we move ourselves and our subjects so that the sun strikes them from the desired angle. The height of the sun and the angle of the camera play huge roles in the aesthetics and narrative of our images.
Images 4-21 through 4-25 are works by a modern day Don Quixote (yours truly) who travels from wind farm to wind farm to photograph turbines. To incorporate wind turbines with the landscape, as a visual prediction of the future of the earth, I need them under all kinds of lighting conditions and directions. Image 4-26 illustrates the directions of light that were captured in these five shots. Each of the different directions shows wind power in a different light (pun intended!).
Tips for Assistants
Your assistant needs to know where to place the light modifier and how to direct the light from the modifier onto the subject. This means the assistant, while holding the modifier in place, should be also watching the subject to see if the modifier is really doing what it should be doing. This is especially important when positioning a reflector, because a tiny misalignment can mean the difference between lots of fill light or no fill light at all. Also, the assistant needs to be attentive to the photographer’s instructions about adjusting the position and distance of the modifier. For the diffuser, bringing the modifier closer to the subject makes the effect more pronounced—but the assistant also needs to make sure not to get so close as to get into the shot! For the reflector, a closer position also results in a stronger effect, but that can also blast the model with squint-inducing light. As an assistant, being able to fold the modifiers is a great skill to have—no kidding! A guarantee that you can easily fold a 72-inch modifier is a nice entry to put into your photography-assistant résumé. (One of my students once took one to an outdoor shoot. At the end, no one in the whole class could manage to fold it up and ended up hastily stuffing the expanded reflector into her car!)
Image 4-21.
Image 4-22.
Image 4-23.
Image 4-24.
Image 4-25.
Image 4-26. The various directions of light in this series.
Image 4-27. The definitions of twilights.
Image 4-28. The sun’s position in the sky affects its color temperature.
As the wind turbine images show, knowing where the sun will be in the sky is an important factor to consider when planning a shoot. Fortunately, the cell phone in your pocket makes that easy.
Star Walk ($2.99) is a window to the heaven. Point your cell phone to the sky and it shows where the celestial bodies are. It also shows the path of the sun, the moon, and planets. Needless to say, knowing the sun’s path is of great value to photographers—it’s helpful information to have when planning a shoot.
Sundroid (free) gives the time of sunrise and sunset at any given locations. “Big deal,” you say. “Lots of apps do that.” But Sundroid does more. It also gives times of twilight, more helpful information for planning the shoot. There are three stages of twilight, happening after sunset and before sunrise: civil twilight, nautical twilight, and astronomical twilight. These twilights, illustrated in image 4-27, when the sun is within a certain angle below the horizon (6, 12, and 18 degrees, respectively). For photographers, it is a good references for the brightness of the twilight; these twilight hours can be captured with a normal exposure, a long exposure, and a very long exposure, respectively.
Aside from twilight, another time of day that is of particular importance to photographers is the golden hours—the period just after the sunrise and just before the sunset. At these times, the word “golden” describes the light both literally (for its color) and figuratively (for its desirable softer quality). It also implies the fleeting quality of it; photographers should cherish these short moments and be productive during them!
Image 4-28 illustrates the science behind the golden hour phenomenon. When the sun is high in the sky, its light efficiently penetrates the atmosphere from a perpendicular angle, resulting in less scattering of its shorter (blue) wavelengths. When the sun is low, its light needs to cut through a thicker layer of the atmosphere. As a result, more of the blue light scatters before it reaches the subjects—and, as a result, the light takes on a much more yellow/gold coloration. At sunset, the light’s color temperature drops to 2000K—about as yellow as the light from an tungsten light bulb. Image 4-29 shows the Dallas skyline photographed under golden hour light. The light indeed has a quality that well blends intensity and softness.
Golden Hours
Warm, low-angle sunlight that occurs just before sunset and just after sunrise.
Image 4-29. The Dallas skyline photographed under golden hour light.
Image 4-30. The Dallas skyline shot under golden hour lighting but color balanced to cancel out the warm tones.
Image 4-31. The Dallas skyline shot on a cloudy day but color balanced to match the tones of golden hour lighting.
The warm color of the golden hour light is an interesting problem to ponder. Check out image 4-30. The same shot is now “color corrected” (a term I really dislike, as there is no such thing “correct” color) so that the look of the golden hour’s color is canceled out. On the other hand, image 4-31 is a shot of the skyline on a cloudy day, also “color corrected” (or more properly, “incorrected”) to mimic the warm colors of golden hour lighting. Neither of these two looks convincingly like it was shot at the golden hours, but image 4-30 scores a little better. This is because the direction of the light, resulting from its low angle, provides some of the essence of the golden hour—it’s not just about the color of the light.
Photographers need time and privacy. Only with clear minds and patience can we fully explore the potential of a scene and, in doing so, fully actualize and express our talent. If the fast tempo of modern society keeps you moving, if the company of family members does not allow prolonged privacy, or if your inner calmness is simply oppressed, this exercise is for you.
Your task is to pick a day with good weather and spend at least three continuous hours at a spot of stunning scenery. It could be at the pinnacle of a scenic overlook, at the foot of a majestic monument, on a body of water looking out onto a city skyline, or at a rustic farm in the middle of nowhere. If your shoot includes golden hour and/or twilight times, this will be especially rewarding (try to avoid doing the whole shoot at midday when the lighting tends to be less inspiring). No matter where you are, the point is to stay, observe, and shoot.
Be mindful that things can be change faster than you expected. The shadow of one building can cross onto another, a beam of light from a break in clouds can illuminate the mountain peak, or the lights along a whole street can pop on—suddenly and without warning. Be ready for every moment. A great shot missed is one less chance to reach stardom in the photographic world!
Portfolio and Practical Examples
Through the course of this chapter, we’ve looked at how light can change your approach to exposure and the results you attain in your images. In this section, I’ll show you how I used light in some of my favorite images.
Images 4-31 and 4-32—A Doorknob Transformed
Light’s transforming power is evident in image 4-31 (below). The setting sun’s beam appeared through a small window and lit up the door knob—and, for a brief moment, it was the center of the universe. An intricate pattern was produced by the direct light through the imperfections in the glass. The light came through a small window in a concentrated beam, there was very little light scattering around the kitchen. This tuned down the other details of the door; while they are still interesting, the radiant doorknob gets most of the attention. I chose to make the image black & white. But what if I had left it in color? Image 4-32 (right) shows just that. Without the color to suggest the time of the day and the sunny light source, I think the black & white version is a more pure presentation of the formal elements.
Image 4-33—Mount Ranier
Unpredictable weather conditions make Mount Rainier a challenging subject. This is a double-edged sword, though; the quick-changing atmosphere sometimes causes multiple weather conditions to appear simultaneously, as captured in image 4-33 (above). In one shot, there is an area of clear sky, a flurry of clouds, and some very thick moisture condensing at the peak—it might even be snowing up there! When I shot this image, the sun was low but not quite into the golden hour range. Planning, patience, and persistence are required to capturing fleeting beauty like this.
“It was essential to block the sun from directly hitting the camera’s sensor, as the intensity of it would have made the exposure very difficult..”
Flare
Artifacts and contrast loss that occur when bright light directly enters the camera and bounces around inside the lens elements in uncontrolled ways.
Blooming
A halo effect produced when some pixels on the image sensor receive so much light that their electronic charge spills over onto neighboring pixels.
Images 4-34 and 4-35—Bryce Canyon Hoodoo
Image 4-34 (large photo, facing page) is a hoodoo of Bryce Canyon, lit by the sun rising behind it. It was essential to block the sun from directly hitting the camera’s sensor, as the intensity of it would have made the exposure very difficult. In addition to major metering interference, any bright, direct light can degrade the image quality. In its milder form, we have flare, an optical phenomenon caused by light bouncing around in the lens in unintended ways. The loss of contrast and visual artifact this produces can be fine when used intentionally, but tend to be less welcome as accidental side effects. Beyond flare, there is a phenomenon called blooming. Blooming is caused when pixels on the image sensor receive so much light that their electric charge overflows onto the neighboring pixels. As a result, a glowing halo appears around the bright spot. In image 4-35 (small photo, below) shot moments later when the sun rose above the hoodoo, blooming is evident. The backlight works much better for this subject—thanks to the structure of Bryce Canyon’s other walls and other hoodoos acting as reflectors, bouncing light onto each other. That bounce light is why the lower part of this hoodoo appear so well lit, even with the sun behind it. The naturally reddish color of the soil there also harmonized with the color of the golden hour lighting, making the color of the valley look even more richly saturated.
Images 4-36 and 4-37—Inner Beauty
Here, we see the “inner beauty” of the Manhattan Bridge. Constructed at the turn of the last century, it is a monument to a bygone era, when structural engineering and aesthetics were a natural fusion. For this image, the lighting was provided by a mild winter sun on a partly cloudy day. The sun was to camera left, halfway toward the direction of back light. This lighting kept the highlighted areas small, leaving most of the steel structure in soft light and portraying the rusted steel in a gentle manner. I used HDR processing and image stitching to assemble multiple shots and create this composite used. (HDR provides ultra-fine details across a large dynamic range. Image stitching allowed me to merge 32 partial-view shots of the scene into one file for a wall-size print with stunning visual impact. To appreciate the effect made possible by these efforts, check out image 4-37 (right). This is what a viewer witnesses when viewing the print up close and personal.
1. The moon is basically a reflector of the sun. Coincidentally, its visual size is nearly identical to the sun. Given these facts, one might expect the quality of moonlight to be similar to the sunlight. This assumption is not far from truth. However, when the moon dominates the night, what’s going on around us can be very different from daylight. Even weather conditions tend to have very different character during the night. What kind of images would you capture if you replaced the sun with the moon? Use it as the only light source for this project and photograph the same types of scenes that people normally think of photographing during the daylight hours.
2. Many objects around us are translucent—vegetables, meats, and fruits from your fridge, for example. A beverage bottle or a capsule of headache medicine come to mind, too. Even the thinner parts of our body, (like the ears) are translucent. How would you photograph these translucent objects by shining light through them? (Hint: Our light sources can be very diverse in this age of high-tech everything. Besides the conventional continuous light and flash, also consider LED and laser sources.)
3. We all know the three primary colors: red, green, and blue. These three colors add up to be white. (This is what is happening if you are reading an electronic version of this book on a monitor or book reader—red, green, and blue pixels are all firing equally to make the screen background white.) What if we separate a light source into these three primary colors, then make three exposures—each one with a different primary color of light? (Note: Multi-exposure is not a function available on all cameras. If your camera doesn’t have it, use Photoshop to overlay these three shots and set the layer blending mode to Add.)
If the subjects and light source(s) in your shot remain identical from frame to frame (only the light color changes), the end result might be no different than a shot made with one neutral light color. So, try moving the light or some part of the object from frame to frame. For example, if you picked a running faucet as your subject, the faucet would remain in the same spot for each frame, but the water would be moving slightly differently in each of the three exposures.
Image 4-38. Replacing the sun with the moon, as in exercise 1.
Image 4-39. Shining light through a translucent subject, as in exercise 2.