Light in Photography

"Without light there is no photography."
Light is an essential ingredient in any good photograph. How we use the light that is available that we, as photographers, are concerned about. The quality of the light and how it affects our photograph. Natural light ranges from cool to warm on the colour temperature scale and is measured in degrees Kelvin as is all types of light. Pre-dawn light has a blue tinge to it because of the reflection from the sky. At sunrise the colour is much warmer although not as warm as sunset aand doesn't last as long. As the sun rises in the sky it becomes cooler in colour until at it's zenith colours are completely neutral. As the sun then heads towards the horizon, it becomes warmer again until you get the reds and oranges of a beautiful sunset. The above would occur on a clear summers day. Next you have to add clouds which change the light as well. Light is normally categorised as Soft and Hard light. Soft light, in terms of outdoor photography, is that light produced on very heavy overcast day. The reason the light is so soft is because the clouds scatter the light decreasing the contrast andd leaving no or very little shadow. The dynamic range is said to be very small. Dynamic range is the difference between dmin and dmax, or the differnce between pure black to pure white. On an overcast day such as the one above range would be very small. Somewhere in the region of 4 to 5 fstops. Maybe not even that, especially on a rainy day. The next scenario would be a light overcast day where the clouds are very high. This type of sky actually works like a softbox on a studio flash. It scatters the light and softens the light but dthe dynamic rangewould be greater then above but not as great as a clear sky and bright sunshine at high noon. Hard light is when you have a large dynamic range with dark shadows with no or little detail and highlights also with no or little detail. This tends to happen on a bright sunny day when the sun is high in the sky. The dynamic range could be as much as 12 fstops. As you can see from above outdoor photography is a question of patience in waiting for the light you are looking for to light your image as you forsaw it. Personally I never use auto white balance. I set my digital cameras manually to approx 5750°K which is the colour balance of daylight film. For outdoor photography this renders colours more naturally. I also use this setting in the studio as studio flash is daylight balanced. How you use the available light is entirely an artistic decision. I hope this has given you some insight into the vagaries of ambient light and how it can be used to your advantage. Nikki H

Camera shake

All of us have suffered from camera shake at one time or another. This happens even though a lot of dslr's have some sort of anti-shake system. Camera shake is related to the ISO you are using as well as the aperture. If the ISO is set at 100 then the minimum shutter speed would be 1/60sec. Most people can hold a camera still at that speed. This is your starting shutter speed in low light conditions. If your aperture is wide open and you want to have some depth of field you have change it to say f8. In this case you would need to increase the ISO until you get the shutter speed you can use hand held. Of course the cure all is a tripod. The above only applies to hand holding a camera. Nikki.

I am Baaaack.

Hello all. I have just returned to the great metropolis that is London. I had a lovely two week sojourn to the South coast, specifically Brighton and Hove. I managed to get some very nice photos of Spring despite the, at times, awful weather. Once I have processed them I will up load them to the albums on my facebook page.
Some of the images of Spring flowers and the creepy-crawlies I am really pleased with.The image of the ladybird I am especially pleased with.
Whilst there I was trying out a new project to see if will work in practice. The idea is to shoot an object and the shadow it casts lit by the sun. No flash allowed.
 I might add silhouettes to that as well.
Hope you are all having a great weekend
Nicola.

Today I would like to discuss self criticism.

Being too self critical can be detrimental to your work. After you have finished editing an image, open it full screen, or as large as it will go in your editing program. Then move back away from the screen to about 4-5ft. Ask yourself these questions.
1. Is it pleasing to the eye?
2. Does it have leading lines?
3. Is there anything that catches the eye and is distracting?
4. Do your eyes wander freely around the image or keep returning to the same spot?
5. Is the main subject the center of attention?
6. Would hang this on your wall?
7. Are the highlights blown? (Just empty white spaces)
8. Do the shadows have texture?
9. What do you like about the image?
10. Is it focussed correctly for what you are trying to show?

There is no hard and fast rule to this but it will teach what to look for when considering posting images. Think about the image from the viewpoint of the viewer. 

Nicola.

Black and White Photography Today

Black and White Photography Today.

“To see in colour is a delight for the eye, but to see in black and white is a delight for the soul.” -

Andri Hery.

In our modern world, photography is more widely available than at any other time in it's history. Everywhere we go there is a massive proliferation of colour photography. We are constantly bombarded with it. This is only natural as we see in colour. Why then, does black and white persist in this era of digital cameras? With the advent of digital photography and the computer used as the darkroom, the media started to announce that film was dead and that it would become obsolete within a few years. Why wait for the film to be developed and then print the images when, you could have them instantly available on your computer screen?

No smelly chemicals or feeling your way around the darkroom. That was going to be a thing of the past.

Instead of it dying out, black and white film, and indeed colour film, has started to increase in popularity again. Although you can of course create a black and white image from a colour digital file by desaturation, the problem comes with enlargements. For large, so called, fine art photography in both colour and black and white, that is meant to be viewed in a gallery from about 4 feet away pixelation starts to occur when printed from a digital file. (Unless you can afford the Hasselblad H4D-200MS. This produces a 200Mp image but, the cost is approximately £64000 or $100,289 with lens at today's prices.) Therefore by using the relatively cheap option of film and a medium or large format camera, The enlargement can be as big as a house without any grain in the photograph. What some pro photographers are doing is printing out negatives of a black and white digital image on A4 acetate and then have them printed using traditional methods. This helps prevent pixelation and also increases the size to which it can be printed.

Unless I want an exhibition quality photograph I don't print my own. What I do is develop the film then scan into the computer at a high resolution, normally 300dpi. This then gives me an exhibition grade print up to about A2 size.

Why black and white?

By stripping away the dominance of colour you are left to view the pattern, texture, light and shape of the object you photographing. The image is taken right back to its' core essence. 

Figure 1 Crane at St Catherines Dock

 

As can be seen in figure1, the image has shadow, light, texture and form. This was taken with a Pentax K20D, ISO: 100, 1/125^th @ f8, 70mm lens.

When converting a digital file to black and white use desaturation or the channel mixer. This retains the information in the RGB channels at 16bits. What this means is, all the information captured by the sensor is retained and you can manipulate the separate channels with contrast and highlights to achieve the look you are after. Also by using unsharp mask and printing on high gloss paper you improve the acutance and gives the image the snap and sparkle of a high quality darkroom print.

One thing you have to watch out for when converting to black and white is that the subject stands out from the background. As the image is a gradation of shades of grey some colours are very close to each other in the grey scale. In colour, red against green is clear delineation between foreground and background but not in black and white. So, if you are taking a picture to convert grey scale, then use a filter to darken one or the other.

A bit of history

Photography: Black and White

In the Beginning:

Long before the advent of photography, the three things needed to create a photograph were known about. The camera obscura (a dark room with a small hole in one wall to display the scene outside), chemical reaction of light on silver (known about by the Greeks) and lenses. Alas no one had ever thought of combining these three separate items until the late 18^th early 19^th centuries. I won't go in to the chronology of the different discoveries. The first to come up with a photographic process were two Englishmen by the names of Thomas Wedgwood and Humphrey Davy(later Sir). They were followed by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, Louis Daguerre and William Fox-Talbot. It was William Fox-Talbot's discovery of the negative that led to the birth of modern photography. The main problem with this early photography was the fact that you had to take your darkroom with you.

The cameras were large and heavy and took 10” x 8” glass plates. Exposures were long, from minutes to hours, and had to be developed immediately. In the mid 1800's came an invention that changed all that. The dry plate. These could be exposed and then stored in the dark until you got back to your darkroom to develop them. In 1888 came the biggest game changer of them all. George Eastman invented roll film, bringing photography to the masses. With the roll film came smaller and lighter cameras. When you bought a Kodak camera it came ready loaded with 100 shots. Once exposed you sent the whole thing back to Kodak and waited for your prints to arrive. With these cameras came the explosion of photography as we know it today. Various film formats came and went and finally along came digital. Invented by Kodak.

First Post ever.

I have been thinking, I know, a dangerous habit, to give some of the rookie photographers a bit of practice at composition, set your cameras to one focal length and stick to it for a week. Record a series of photographs at that setting. To compose the image as you would like the it to be, you will have to change positions until you find the right composition. It can be a lot of fun to do. Happy snapping. Nikki.