Photographic Lighting

Photography is all about light.  It’s great when you come upon a scene with great light already present.  Unfortunately it isn’t very common if you want to make a portrait or some other image on purpose.  Consequently it is very important to learn how to control light and create the scene you want to show.

I’ve learned a lot about this from several places.  My journey began with Ken Rockwell who taught me to shoot after sunset and the value of balancing the light from the sky with that from surrounding buildings and other sources at dusk.  Having thus developed an interest in controlling exposure, I found Bryan Peterson’s excellent book, “Understanding Exposure”.  Bryan taught me that I could use the meter in my camera to help me create a better image.  Next came a careful read through “Light: Science and Magic“, a truly important work on photographic lighting.  Following that, I found “The Strobist“, David Hobby.  His Lighting 101 and Lighting 102 series of posts was revolutionary for me.  From there I moved along to the inimitable Joe McNally, a great shooter who gets jobs from the likes of Sports Illustrated and National Geographic.  Joe has an excellent and entertaining Blog as well as a couple of books.  The one I found most useful is “The Hot Shoe Diaries“.

I’m going to take the next few posts to discuss some of the things I’ve learned about light.  I’ll give you some examples and talk about some of the mistakes I made along the way.