14. How to Take Photos 9: Outdoor Lighting Conditions
Almost all this information comes from lessons by Chris Parker & Chris Bray, including the photo examples.
It’s important to know the different types of light and the direction the light is coming from in your image. Once you know that, and how to work with a flash, your photos will look much more professional. There are two types of light, natural and artificial. The intensity of that light depends on how close you are to it (although sunlight is both the brightest and the farthest source during the day).
Light behaves in three different ways, it reflects, gets absorbed, and it transmits through matter - say, through a window pane, or a pool of water. As light transmits through things, its color combines with what it goes through. So, if you're standing under a red tent with a thin canvas, sunlight will pass through it, mixing with the red and giving you and everything underneath a red tint. Furthermore, as light transmits through an object, it can scatter, in varying amounts, becoming softer and more diffuse. Sunlight also changes throughout the day and according to the weather.
Morning Lighting – The Golden Hour:
The hour after sunrise is generally considered ideal for photography. If you can get up that early (actually earlier to get in position) you can get really beautiful lighting and shadows. There’s not too much contrast, the shadows aren’t so dark, and the light is generally soft.
Harsh lighting (sunny day):
A bright sunny day might be perfect to get outdoors, go running, play some soccer, have a picnic. But, it isn’t always considered best for lighting, at least not by some photographers. They often complain about the harsh light and high contrast that makes shadows too dark, and can over-expose skies. Some even suggest to use your own shadow to cast over your subjects, to get a softer light. I actually love sunny days for taking photos outdoors, and I enjoy the higher contrast. But, I try to focus on forest interiors with the light playing through the trees – especially with autumn colors:
It can be great any time of year.
Note, it helps if you point your camera away from the sun, to avoid over-exposing the sky.
And even with sunny skies, a few clouds are actually advantageous. A bright blue sky can be great when you’re outside, but compositionally it’s a bit flat and boring.
For great artists who live in flat areas, like the Netherlands or Southern England, or the American mid-west for example, painting cloud-filled skies is crucial to creating a dynamic landscape composition:
Photographers face the same dilemma and must look for dramatic skies and clouds when there’s nothing else suitable as a subject.
Top lighting (around noon)
With top lighting, on a sunny day, you can get some unfortunate shadows for faces, for example in eye sockets. The light is very bright on top, and very dark below:
It’s not so flattering. If you run into this problem, you should look for shade lighting:
Shade lighting
Anything that is covered in shade makes for a better lighting during a sunny day. Shade light is even, and radiant.
Cloud Lighting
One thing you need to watch for with cloudy or shaded light is that it can flatten your subjects. At least that harsh sunlight really emphasizes the roundness and volume of things.
Evening/Low lighting
This can be a great time for beautiful photos, but don’t always use your flash. Consider using a tripod, raising your ISO, and shooting slower shutter speeds to capture the ambient light of a scene. This will make your photos feel more authentic – it gives you the sense of what it was really like to be there:
Whereas a flash photo emphasizes that you’re the one with a camera, documenting things, it’s not nearly as magical, it feels more matter-of-fact and journalistic:
Front Lighting
With front lighting there are very few shadows visible – they’re all behind the subject. Front lighting works well for product photos for catalogs, but for other subjects there are some drawbacks. If your subject is shiny or glossy, you often get glare.
Faces also have shiny areas that can create glare.
Front lighting also flattens subjects, there’s little sense of volume or depth.
Side Lighting
Side Lighting improves photos by revealing form and texture through shadows:
Back Lighting
This can get you really beautiful effects, for example a halo-like glow to your figures:
Or beautiful silhouettes:
With back lighting you have to watch out for lens flare, unless it’s something you want to use in an image. Lens hoods are a good way to avoid lens flare. Besides lens flare, direct sunlight on your lens can desaturate your colors, or highlight any dust that’s on your lens. Even worse, it can keep your auto focus from working.
Using a Flash
Chris Bray says he uses a flash much more during the day than at night. He uses a technique called “fill-flash” photography, where you let the flash fill darker areas with light, so that the shadows aren’t so dark or harsh, and it still looks natural. No one would know he used a flash unless he told them. Here’s an example without flash:
And with the flash:
Chris Bray also recommends using an external flash, especially one you can swivel or dis-attach and use remotely (especially if it’s cordless). Newer model external flashes can synch with your camera to give a “pre-flash” microseconds before the camera takes the photo, to help the light meter gauge just how much light there will be, and auto-adjust either the aperture or shutter speed, depending on your settings. The major reason external flashes are better than your built-in camera flash is that this one only provides front lighting, which is, as noted above, flat and boring. When you swivel the external flash to the side, and let its light bounce off a wall to hit the subject, it provides side lighting. And if you have a friend hold it, you can get all kinds of effects.
Color Bleeding
Color can bounce off of objects and onto your subject the same way light does, and can provide really beautiful effects if you look for it – or even plan for it.
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