Five Lighting Tips that will Improve your Photography
Photography can be a hobby or a career for many but–since the advent of the internet, there are great opportunities to make money from the craft. Photographers can also use technologies to enhance their photography. One important staple of photography is the lighting. Technology can only correct so much. Doing it right the first time helps a lot and saves a lot of work in the long-run. Here, we’ll cover five evergreen lighting tips that will do wonders for photographers at all levels.
Broad and Narrow Light
If you want to harden the light then use a very narrow and concentrated light source. This will create a spotlight effect and cast more shadows around the subject. This is great for romantic or mysterious scenes. If you want less shadow and a nice professional contrast, then broaden the light.
Lighting for Black and White as Color
Light your subject as if it’s a color photo, even if you mean it’s not. The camera is more sensitive to color-cast than our eye. Don’t trust what your eyes are telling the brain. Colors you don’t see will show up and cause you a do-over. Light bulbs will bounce light off a nearby surface and cast the color of that surface on to the image. While you may not see this with the naked eye, you’ll see it after-the-fact and must do-over all your hard work.
(These tips are here to make sure you don’t have to do unnecessary work. We know how hard it is to have the best atmosphere for your art. One suggestion is that at some point you look into securing a Modern Studio Shed and devote that space only to your photography.)
Angular Lighting and Volume with Shadows
If you want a more 3-dimensional looking image; in other words, the image would not be so flat against the background. This is done with a trick of angular lighting in some instances. It involves the casting of shadows that will create this illusion. Those who use photography for product portfolios or landscape, often use it for this reason.
So, for example: If you want to pump up the volume in an image, then shoot say, a landscape from the side angle. Or, shoot a portrait from the top and on an angle. This is very common with selfies taken with iPhones now.
Texture Emphasis and De Emphasis
There’s one simple rule to understand with this: The larger the angle on the subject, the more texture you’ll see. This is similar to the “angular lighting and shadows” tip in this piece. Those who do landscape photography provide the best examples of this. Why? because, there are rocks, sand, plants, forest and animals that provide layers and dimension to an image. Side angle lighting would be used for this. But, let’s say a portrait photographer has a subject with facial flaws that they need to hide? Then, keeping the light at the axis of the lens would de-emphasize those flaws better and provide a smoother look. Check Amazon Product Photography China
Close Light Makes a Softer Image
We can expand the first point in this piece using the light to soften images that look best this way. Sometimes, you want to capture the bold colors in a flower and make them as bold as possible. And, sometimes you want to soften the pastel colors or use them in a background. For this, you’ll want closer light, so the hard edges go soft.
Photography is but a trick of lights This is one of the most important, if not the most important part of photography. Without the light, we have no image so, happy photographing and keep in mind these 5 simple lighting concepts and you should enjoy photography even more.