[Part three of the Photography Fundamentals series, be sure to check out all 10 posts!]
In part one of this series, we talked about luminance. A lot.
So why another post about lighting? Because it’s kind of a big deal (like Ron Burgundy).
To shake things up a little bit, I’m going to approach this one from a different angle. We’ll look at some of the most common lighting mistakes made by amateur photographers. Make these mistakes and it’s a dead give-away that you don’t really know what you are doing.
Some of these mistakes can be “on purpose” if someone is trying to achieve an effect and remember, if it looks good, it is good. Just try to avoid the following.
Flash Artifacts:
I recommended in the first post in this series that you break off the built-in flash on your camera. It may seem extreme, but I promise you that almost no great pictures will come from your camera using a built in flash. Here are some common mistakes with flash photography.
Red Eye:
Everyone knows about this one: glowing red eyes in a picture. There’s even a whole nifty setting on your camera to help you avoid red eye.
Here’s an easier way to avoid it: don’t use your flash. Even when red-eye reduction is working properly, it ends up usually looking a little strange. The best thing to do is to try to use your other exposure controls (shutter speed, aperture and ISO) to control the exposure. You can also invest in a better flash or other alternate light source for your photos (here’s a useful guide).
Everyone knows red-eye is a rookie mistake and no one wants to see it. Especially since the red light is your flash reflecting off of your blood-rich Choroid. Creeper.
Flash Reflections:
If you point a bright light source at any reflective surface and take a picture, some of that light will be reflected and captured in your camera.
The result: a bright glare somewhere in your image. Flash photography is particularly notorious for reflections because photographers can’t see the reflected light through their viewfinder and don’t know it is there until they get to review their pictures.
To avoid flash reflections, avoid big-reflective surfaces (especially windows) if you have to take a flash picture. Eye-glasses can also cause an unsuspected reflection.
Vignetting:
A vignette is an effect where an image gradually gets darker from the center out. Vignettes are cool! They are especially hip these days in a lot of stylized photography, so why would we want to avoid them?
Flash vignettes typically don’t look great. The result is usually the subject ending up way too bright and the background barely visible. It’s usually caused by the subject being much closer to the flash than to the background. The subject reflects all the light from the flash, and the background does not. I’m sure you’ve seen pictures like this.
Vignettes are avoided by the same techniques mentioned in the red-eye solution. Use a different light source or pay for a nicer flash. If you have an aim-able flash, pointing the flash up (and bouncing some of the light off the ceiling and background) can help reduce the amount of vignetting.
The easiest way to avoid bad flash artifacts is: don’t use one.
As I mentioned before, use daylight whenever you can. God gave us the best light source for photography EVER.
Mixed Lighting:
Did you know light is different colors?
I think I knew it on some level before I got into videography, but when I started my obsession with color-theory, I truly started noticing mixed lighting in images.
The color of light is measured by temperature in Kelvin (that takes me back to high-school science) and it is important for photographers who shoot color pictures to understand how this can affect them. Mixed lighting and improper white-balance can lead to quite a few mistakes that you can easily avoid.
Auto White Balance Fail:
No digital cameras know what color white is. They have to be told. If left alone, they will try to figure it out themselves and, more often than not, they fail.
The good news is that the built in settings on your camera are actually very useful for correcting this mistake. But first you have to figure out where in your settings to manually set your white balance. Look at the light in the space you are shooting and change your white balance settings to match. If you are outside, use the daylight WB, if you’re inside, figure out if your light is tungsten or fluorescent.
In a situation where there are multiple color temperatures of light and you can’t control it, always white balance for the light on your subject. For example, if you are shooting indoors where your subject is lit by a floor lamp but there is also window light in the frame, white-balance for the light on your subject.
White balance can also be easily corrected in your editing stage, but understanding a little bit about white balancing should help your images look more professional without correction.
Bad Ratios:
Lighting is all about ratios, that is, comparing intensities of the lights in an image to each other. For example, if Light A is twice as bright as light B, the ratio of A:B is 2:1. A gifted photographer knows good lighting ratios when he sees them. An inexperienced photographer sometimes ignores them, which can cause a few problems.
One of the most obvious lighting ratio mistakes is when the subject of a photo is standing in a shadow, while the background of the image is brightly lit.
Sometimes this can create an awesome silhouette effect.
Usually it means whoever is looking at your image will be drawn to the background (because it is bright) and not the subject.
A simple rule of thumb is to always make your subject twice as bright as the background (a 2:1 ratio). This will help your subject stand out from its surroundings and draw the viewer’s eye to the subject.
Remember, none of these are hard-and-fast rules. They can be bent, broken and ignored as you please. Since all photographs are made up of reflected light, knowing and understanding how to use it to your advantage (or what to avoid) can help you on your path to becoming a better photographer.
[Part three of the Photography Fundamentals series, be sure to check out all 10 posts!]
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