Tom Clark - Digital Photography Composition For Dummies

Any light source that you include in a scene but isn't provided by the sun and isn't placed there by you is known as an available light source. These sources could be lamps, streetlights, or any other manmade light. In this section, I concentrate only on natural lighting, but most of the rules that apply to natural light also apply to available light, assuming you don't have the ability to reposition them or control their intensity.

Time of day has everything to do with the direction of the sun in relation to a particular scene. So become familiar with the sun and its patterns. The sun is the main light source used in outdoor photography, and it doesn't change its ways for anyone. The time of year and your location on the planet determine exactly how the sun will move through the sky throughout the day.

The time just before the sun rises and just after the sun sets (known as dusk and dawn) often provides amazing light for photographing. The sky is colorful at dusk and dawn, and the light that occurs during these time periods is soft and has a directional quality that isn't as intense as direct sunlight. The light, which has a soft quality with low contrast, makes for dreamy results.

Dusk and dawn are great times for capturing photographs of objects with specular surfaces (surfaces that reflect light like a mirror). It used to be popular to photograph cars during dusk or dawn so they would be evenly lit and wouldn't have any hot spots from the sun's reflections. I enjoy shooting landscapes and portraits during this time.

The day begins and ends with the sun in a low position, which is ideal for creating compositions with sidelight. Sidelight refers to light that comes across your scene from the side, creating highlights and shadows that reveal texture. The light at sunrise and sunset doesn't last long, and as the sun makes its way up over the horizon, its effect on the scene changes drastically.

In portraits, sunrise and sunset are just right for using the split lighting pattern (check out the earlier section "Positioning your light source to create lighting patterns"). In landscape photography, these times are ideal for creating compositions with long shadows and for revealing texture in a scene.

When I travel to a new location, I always wake up before sunrise at least once so I can explore the city, town, or scenery during this inspirational time of day.

Figure 10-8 shows a sidelit landscape that I shot in Death Valley at sunrise. Notice how the light causes the texture of the dunes to be revealed and how it only affects certain areas of the scene. The foreground area is on a slope that faces west. Because the sun is so low in the sky, only the parts of the dunes that are facing the east receive light. As the sun gets higher, everything gets filled in with light, eliminating the early morning intricacies.

135mm, 1/125 sec, f/B, 100

Figure 10-8:As the sun creeps over the horizon, you can watch the light enter the scene.

When the sun is between 15 and 45 degrees in the sky (which indicates morning and evening), it's still low enough to reveal texture and shape. If it's positioned slightly (or directly) behind the scene, it works as an excellent backlight. A backlit scene is great for emphasizing depth because texture is revealed from front to back rather than side to side.

During these morning and evening times, you can create loop and Rembrandt lighting patterns in portraits. (Refer to the earlier section "Positioning your light source to create lighting patterns" for more on these patterns.) This also is a great time to shoot landscapes and city scenes.

In Figure 10-9,1 was able to emphasize texture and depth by shooting the scene with the sun behind it and about 30 degrees in the sky. Notice how the texture in the sand is revealed from front to back, showing separation that gives you an idea of how far the beach extends into the background.

24mm, 1/250 sec, f/3.5, 100

Figure 10-9:Backlighting a scene helps to reveal depth in a textured surface.

During the times when the sun is at 45 degrees, you can achieve the paramount lighting pattern (see the earlier section "Positioning your light source to create lighting patterns") in portraits; however, after the sun goes much higher than that, you don't want to use it as a direct key light. When the sun is high in the sky, it casts shadows over the eye sockets that are referred to as raccoon eyes.

When photographing people in the middle of the day, I suggest that you look for shade. The shade provides a more even light. When your subject is in the shade, you can have an assistant bounce in some sunlight with a reflector (see "Modifying the quality and contrast of light," earlier in this chapter, for details about reflectors). Doing so enables you to choose what light direction works best with your subject and composition.

You usually won't get good results when photographing landscapes during the middle of the day when the sun is high. If you don't have a choice to wait around for better light, experiment and make the best of every situation. It's possible — just not likely — to get beautiful results in the middle of the day. In fact, sometimes you get your best and most creative results at those times when you normally wouldn't even take your camera out of its bag. So don't let yourself get too caught up in the rules and common practices.

The sun's elevation is drastically different in the summer months than it is in the winter months, so factor this in when determining what time to arrive on a specific location. After all, the direction of light and how it affects your scenes depends on the sun's elevation. In downtown metropolitan areas and in the valleys of mountains, you lose your direct sunlight much quicker than you do in flat areas — especially in the dead of winter. Arrive earlier than you normally would to these types of locations in order to capture the sunlight before it creeps behind the buildings or mountains.

The quality of light in a specific region also may be different throughout the year due to changing weather patterns. In San Francisco, for example, the summer is filled with hazy days causing direct sunlight and distant visibility to become severely limited.

Pay attention to the seasonal patterns in your home region and create a log of the pros and cons for shooting at certain times of the year. When you plan atrip, do some research to find out what time of year best suits photographing in your desired destination.

Most photographs are captured in a fraction of a second. Quick shutter speeds eliminate motion as much as possible to give you the sharpest, clearest image. When you leave your shutter open for extended periods of time, anything moving in the frame starts to blur or streak; if the source of light moves, the light in your scene changes throughout the course of the exposure.

Some common subjects to photograph with long exposures are waterfalls, flowing creeks, rivers, and windy sand dunes. When you capture light in motion, you let go of the desire to achieve technical perfection and instead create something that's more surreal than real.

To shoot with a long exposure during the day, set your camera to its lowest ISO rating and use the smallest aperture setting available. (See Chapter 3 to get the details on ISO and aperture.) If these settings don't slow down your exposure enough to achieve the amount of motion you want, use a neutral density filter in front of your lens. This filter is made of glass and is neutral in color. Its purpose is to decrease the amount of light entering the lens without changing the colors in a scene. You can buy these filters in a variety of densities, or you can purchase a variable density filter that enables you to choose between a variety of densities on a single filter. The darker the filter, the more light it blocks out.