Lesson 26. See the Direction of Light
There are several ways to see light, and I think it’s important to be aware of it, understand it, and use it to create the strongest photographs you can. So I won’t try to create categories and labels as much as I will describe the ways of seeing light and begin a conversation that I hope will continue to resonate with you long after you’re done with this book.
Nikon D3s, 145mm, 1/400 @ f/13, ISO 200
What the light is doing in this scene is what makes the scene—and the photograph. Being able to see the light and know what it is doing is fundamental to making compelling photographs.
My focus in this book is natural light. If you can learn to see the light that nature provides, you can re-create it, modify it, and add to it in the studio with all the latest artificial lights. But let’s assume it begins with one light—because it does—and from that one light there are more than enough lighting scenarios to inspire even the most attention-deficient studio photographers.
I’ll begin with the direction of light, because that will open more immediate topics to us than other conversations like, for example, the color of light. Understanding the effect of the directionality of light matters when you photograph in the middle of a field as much as it does if you’re positioning lights in a studio. Although it’s easy to think that we simply take what we’re given, it’s not so simple. Imagine this: You walk into a field of tall, green grass. It’s late afternoon and the sun is halfway between its zenith at high noon and the horizon, where it will set. The sun is behind you. In front of you is a maple tree. It’s October in the Northern Hemisphere, so the leaves are turning. Beautiful.
In the scenario I’ve just described, you can’t do a thing about the position of the sun. But you can move yourself and your camera in a circle around the tree. As you do, the light, relative to you and the scene, changes. As it does, the look and feel of the resulting photograph changes as well. Keep reading.