Art where you control light.

Photography has been my life in the past few years.

Holding on to different equipment from lenses to camera bodies, I’ve learned a lot.

It doesn’t really matter what camera you use or what lens you use, it’s how you use it. Think of all the perspectives and different compositions you can take. Photography is all about imagination.

If you can see it with your eyes and imagination then you can snap it back in your camera. The camera is only a tool you will use to hold that leap from your perspective.

Photography is the art where you control light. You paint by what light you see this may sound a bit complicated but don’t worry this article will do its b est to explain to you all the lighting process you need to know. By understanding how lighting affects a scene and by learning how to light people, you can improve your portrait images and createmore intimate and better-lit photographs. 

By understanding the behavior of this energy that we call light, you form a foundation for your success as a portrait photographer. A painter might not need to know the chemical and physical properties of each and every component of her oils or paints, but she must however, understand how to blend the different colors. Also, how the paints behave as she applies them to the canvas takes practice, experience and knowledge.

Just as a sculptor or painter must gain masterful insight into the physical behavior of the raw materials of their chosen arts, so must the portrait photographer gain a keen and polished understanding of the behavior of light. The first prerequisite for any photography is some form of light being emitted from a source. Think about it, without light, photography is absolutely impossible. The light you use may be emitted from a natural source, like the sun, or from any artificial source such as speed lights, strobes or a constant light source. 

Controlling Light

These methods are effective for controlling the average or overall light intensity on your composition. Many devices have now been developed to control the relative intensities of light on specific areas within a photo or composition. Devices such as gobos, scrims, snoots, barn doors and grid spots, are commonly used to partially direct, block or otherwise control the light intensities within a particular composition.

The light temperature, “Pure» white light is the result of an equally balanced mixture of the three primary colors being red, green, and blue. In certain lighting conditions (e.g. cloudy versus bright sun), the proportions of the color mixture can vary. Normally, our brain will automatically compensate for this and you will not notice the difference in «temperature» as you leave one lighting situation and enter another. 

Film or sensors cannot make the same automatic compensation so differences in color temperature must be manually adjusted by the photographer. 

Color temperatures of various light conditions are commonly stated in degrees Kelvin. There are (if you still use them) three standard color temperature rated films that are commonly used by photographers.

«Daylight» film is manufactured to be exposed by 5500K light, «indoor» film is made to be exposed by 3400K light, and 3200K light is used for professional «indoor» film. 

All Digital SLR cameras now have their own, in-built white balance adjustment for you to electronically and manually compensate for changing color temperatures in various light conditions that you may come across. With digital photography, and when shooting in RAW format, the color temperature can easily and quickly be corrected in Photoshop.

In the photography studio, we have many light modifiers available to use, so as to control the size of the light source and so control the level of its contrast. For any given size of any light source, as it is positioned further and further away from the subject we can see that it effectively becomes much smaller, thereby yielding much higher levels of contrast, albeit lower with lower intensity. 

Light always acts on any subject it strikes. This much may be obvious but every subject also reacts on any light that strikes it. 

A subject can act on light hitting it in three distinct and different ways;

• Refraction, 

• Absorption, 

• And reflection. 

Refraction is the bending or redirection of light waves as they pass through any transparent material such as water or glass. In fact, the refractive properties of glass are what are manipulated within photographic lenses, in order to focus an image onto the film (or digital imaging sensor). 

Absorption is the process where certain materials convert light energy into another form of energy (usually heat or temperature). The absorptive properties of a black-painted, foam core board can be used by a photographer to selectively «subtract» or reduce light, so that it does not bounce itself around the studio in an undesirable and unflattering way.

Reflection. Of the three ways a subject may act on the light striking it, reflection is (for most) the most important to the photographer. 

Reflection is a quick and abrupt change in the direction of light waves that strike the surface of any subject. In direct reflection, the light rays will bounce from a smooth surface at the same angle at which they hit. The actual intensity of the direct reflection will mirror the intensity of the light source. 

Glare, like that seen on the surface of a body of water, is known as a polarized direct reflection. Unlike direct reflection though, «glare reflection» will always have a lower intensity than the light source which produces it. Glare reflection can be controlled or mostly eliminated by using a polarizing or polarizer filter. 

To recap, any subject will also act on light that strikes it whether through refraction, absorption, reflection, or indeed a combination of all three. 

With portrait photography, the light is controlled in order to achieve optimum , balanced exposure of your composition to reveal and enhance the textures of your subject, its forms and color saturation, and also to build a three dimensional perspective. 

There are many other factors that we can still discuss and other techniques you may use so as I plotted in the begging it varies on the person behind the camera.     

                                                                                  Ehab Waleed Azab  

Freelance Graphic Designer, Photographer