Posts Tagged ‘Photographic lighting techniques’

Nowadays everyone is a photographer. I don't mean that in a condescending way, but rather as a matter of fact. The cost of shooting with a digital camera is much less than it was with film, and almost everyone has a camera built into their phone they can use.

A lot of people like to just point and shoot with their cameras. And there's nothing wrong with that. But with just a little bit of knowledge and effort they could be capturing much better images than they take at the moment.

In this article I'm going to look at five things people often don't pay attention to when taking a photo. But by paying attention to these things, you can easily end up with a much better photo than a simple point and shoot image that had no thought put into it.

A plain white or black background can be very useful for both photography and video. It gives a very clean look, without any distractions to take the viewer's attention away from the subject.

A plain white background also works well where the intent is for the image or video to blend in with a web page or printed page that is also white. (The same for black, though white is a much more common background).

A plain background is often used for catalog style product photography. And it can also work well for portraits, still lifes, and studio-style nature photos. In this article we'll look at a few different ways you can create a clean white or black background for your images or videos (the technique is the same for both).

Lighting is obviously very important in photography. Without light, there'd be no photo. But what you may not realize is that the direction of the lighting plays a large role in the look of a photo.

There are three main directions of light that are purposefully used in photography - Front Lighting, Back Lighting, and Side Lighting. It is these that I want to take a look at in this article.

Have you ever asked yourself why some of your pictures look lifeless, boring or empty? Observe the image; check if the eyes of your subject have a catchlight. If it doesn't, consequently it might be one of the reasons why your portrait is visually monotonous.

A catchlight, or better known as eyelights, is referred to the depiction of the chief source of light that makes an unusual glimmer or flicker. This glint could be typically within the eyes of the subject per se. This is a very important ingredient in adding life or tone towards your portrait and can be seen usually at 10 o‚'clock or 2 o‚'clock in the eyes, where it animates your subject most effectively.

2006_04.09 Isaac closeup by Christine Szeto on flickr (licensed CC-BY)