Portrait Frau im Mohnfeld

 

 

“It’s all about the light” –
Light is the most important element when it comes to photography 

 

 

 

At my first trainee-ship at a photograph, the photograph asked me: “what is the most elementary element of photography. I had no idea, but today I know it. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE LIGHT. Without light, you can’t make a picture. If you can set a professional light set up than you can make great pictures with the cheapest camera and the really hard to learn in photography is not to understand the camera, it’s to control the light. If I got too much light I will overexpose pictures, if I have only one hard light I will get shadows of black. With too less light I get a blurry picture because the exposure time is too long or the picture gets noisy because of the ISO. Well about the Topic light you can write a lot of books, but this tutorial is for beginners and I will give some tips for better light set up:


 

Photography Tips
 Look for shadows

 At the beginning it will be really hard to shoot in the sunlight, because this light is really hard and this makes hard and dark shadows. It can be also great to shoot in the sun, but there for you will need some experience and some more equipment to make good pictures. The picture on the right side is taken in the shadow the light is really soft and we don’t have “black” shadows.

 

 

portrait-mann-gegenlicht-herbst

 


Photography Tips
 Try different source of lights


The natural light is the most popular light, but there are different types of light. For example: the directly sunlight and diffuse light in shadows. You also can try to use light, which is reflected by some building or use the classic Window. With a window you get a frontal light, this light is much better than the sunlight from the top and if you use a white curtain in front of the window you will get a beautiful soft light. You can also try different lamps. The Picture one the right is taken with window light.


Männer Portrait mit Hosenträgern
Portrait Frau mit Schattengitter auf Gesicht
Männer Portrait im Gegenlicht

 

Photography Tips
 Sun as backlight

 

One of my favorite settings is sun as back light. But this works only in the early morning or late evening. This light is a hard but really warm light. The difficulty is here; that you will need to use a reflector or flash for your model, if not the sky will look like a white space. With Sun as back light you will also get a stunning lens flare.

 

swirly-bokeh-portrait-black-white-woman

 

 

portrait-fashionblogger-christina-key

 


Photography Tips
 Use a reflector

 

This is really important; on every shooting I have at least 1 person with a reflector with me, because the reflector gives me the possibility to light up the dark shadows. But be carefully with reflector, because the reflector has another light temperature than the other light. It’s not possible to hide all shadows and at the most cases it will be look strange if the reflector light have the same bright as the (sun) light. On the right picture we have the sun as a side-back-light. To make the face brighter we used a reflector at the front.


Swirly-Bokeh-Portrait-Female
sexy-portrait-frau-im-bikini

 


How do you like this article? 🙂
XX, Nico Treeman

 

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