The following book excerpt has been republished from Nature Photography by Chris Weston with the permission of Focal Press. The complete book is available for purchase by photo.net users for 20% off the cover price for a limited time (use promo code “PHOTONET”).
Have you ever returned from a photography session only to find that the image you made looks nothing in print like it appeared to you at the time? This is the type of conundrum I hear talked about often during the workshops I run and in e-mail questions I receive via my website. It is the perennial photographic problem and one that continues even after the
technical aspects of photography have been mastered. That’s the bad news. The good news is that there is a simple solution.
The camera sees the world very differently from the way in which we see it. For example, we see in color, while cameras see in black and white and shades of gray. So what? Well, imagine a red pepper and a green pepper. Photograph them next to one another in color and it’s easy to tell them apart. Photograph them in black and white, however, and it is impossible to tell the difference—they are the same gray tone.
Another difference is that we have two eyes, while the camera has only one. Having two eyes enables us to calculate the distance between objects, an ability lost when you close one eye. If you want to try this out, the next time you’re sitting in the passenger seat of a vehicle—and I emphasize the words passenger seat—close one eye and try to determine the distance to the car in front of you. Note how the sense of depth created by two eyes is no longer apparent and that the scene in front of you now appears to be two dimensional, or flat.
Something else is lost when we make a photograph. When you’re outside taking pictures, all of your senses are working, taking in information and making you feel and respond in a certain, usually positive, way. Not only do you see the scene before you, you hear the wind in the trees, smell the sweet aromas of nature, feel the texture of the land and the breeze on your skin, and taste the air. But when you press the shutter, the camera only records what it sees and four out of the five senses that influence how you respond emotionally to the subject are lost.
When you think about it, it’s little wonder that a two-dimensional, single-sense photograph might struggle to live up to the actual experience we had at the time of its taking. The real skill in photography that sets apart the great images from the snapshots is the ability to replace this missing/lost information using purely visual tools, to give the viewer a sense of what you felt by recording the image in such a way that it stimulates the imagination and stirs emotions.
It is a skill that can be learned and the starting point is to get into the habit of seeing what your camera sees.
Let me be blunt about this: Without light there is no photography, just as without paint there is no painting. Light is the photographer’s paint, and how it is applied to the canvas, (i.e., the digital sensor), will determine its visual attributes. By manipulating light it is possible to reveal and hide objects, tones can be made lighter or darker, colors altered, changed and replaced. Shadows can be softened, hardened and made to disappear; highlights lost and gained; dimensions molded or flattened at will; objects positioned to order. Put simply, forget about the technological wizardry that is the modern-day camera and think about light because, without it, frankly the camera is about as useful as a saw without wood or, indeed, a canvas without paint.
Light Intensity
The intensity of light affects exposures in that the greater the intensity the shorter the duration of exposure (shutter speed) or the less quantity of light (lens aperture) is needed, giving the user greater flexibility in exposure settings. For example, bright conditions will enable faster shutter speeds and smaller apertures, which may be required for freezing the appearance of motion or increasing depth of field, respectively.
Of course, the opposite can be true. If a slow shutter speed is needed to blur motion or a narrow depth of field is desired to hide background detail, then lower intensity light is advantageous. In outdoor photography, intensity is determined primarily by the time of day and the weather. Light becomes more intense as its angle to the Earth increases. And, on sunny days light is more intense than on overcast days when clouds absorb and scatter light. The other factor influencing intensity is the light-to-subject distance. But when referring to sunlight, light-to-subject distance is, for all intents and purposes, fixed; this distance measure applies only to lighting from an artificial source.
Quality of Light
Light can be hard or soft, referred to as its quality. Hard light is directional and emanates from a small (point) source, creating distinctive shadows with well-defined edges. To visualize the effects of hard lighting, imagine shining a high-power torchlight at an object and the shadows that would appear on the object’s unlit side.
Soft lighting is the opposite. Soft light emanates from a large diffused source or is reflected from multiple sources, and is omnidirectional, scattering over a wide area. As a result, shadows are less intense as they are partially lit by this scattered light, and shadow edges are less easily defined.
The quality of light determines levels of contrast, which is important to photography because cameras have a limited ability to record contrast. In addition, compositionally shadows enable photographers to create a sense of depth, form and dimension, helping to make the two-dimensional print appear three-dimensional in form.
Outdoors the quality of light is determined primarily by the weather. On a sunny day the sun acts as a small, point source, much like a spotlight. When the sky is overcast, however, clouds scatter the light in many directions throwing illumination over a much wider area. Therefore, the shadows and contrast that create a sense of depth are more apparent on sunny days than cloudy days, when a scene is more likely to appear flat.
The direction from which light falls on an object will define various aspects of its appearance. For example, front lighting will reveal detail but not texture, while side lighting will emphasis texture and form by creating shadows. Backlighting is the primary tool for creating silhouettes and the golden halo effect of rim lighting.
The reality of outdoor nature photography, under natural light conditions, is that the direction of light at any given time cannot be changed and, if the subject of the photograph is immoveable, such as a mountain or an obstinate animal, then you either have to work with what you’ve got or come back at a better time.
Using maps to visualize how a scene will look is a technique used by Nick
Meers, which saves him time in the field, enabling him to be more productive
photographically (see photos above).
For photographers then, an important habit to learn in relation to the direction of light is to know how to determine the best time of day to photograph any given subject, as highly successful travel and landscape specialist, Nick Meers, explains: “I use maps, together with a Sunrise/Sunset compass, to plan my shoots and visualize my compositions. When traveling I always make a note of places that are worth going back to in better conditions, or when I have more time. When I get back to the studio I mark the location on the appropriate Ordnance Survey map—I have the entire set—and read the contours and try to image how the scene will look under different lighting conditions. I use the compass to assess the direction of light at sunrise and sunset to help me determine the best time to return to take the image.”
Think about what happens to a piece of metal when it’s heated in a furnace. As well as getting hotter it changes color. First it goes red, then orange, yellow, and finally, at its hottest point, a blue/white color. Exactly the same thing happens to the color of light as the sun rises throughout the day.
At sunrise the color temperature of light is low resulting in its reddish appearance. In the early morning, the color changes to orange and then at mid-morning to yellow, and finally, around an hour before and leading up to noon, white. In the afternoon, the changes are reversed in the same way that the changes in color of metal are reversed as it cools from its hottest point.
It is the color temperature of light that makes sunrise and sunset, early morning, and late afternoon the ideal times for nature photography, times of the day we refer to in photographic circles as the “golden hours,” as the warmth of the color of light around these hours shines through.
Have you ever wondered what it is that professional photographers do day in and day out that enables them to take consistently compelling images? Or thought that unravelling the insider secrets of the professionals could inspire you? Nature Photography: Insider Secrets from the World’s Top Digital Photography Professionals takes a contemporary and innovative approach to revealing the day-to-day habits of the world’s most successful wildlife, landscape and macro photographers, divulging the core skills and techniques through which they excel.
This book is crammed full with expert advice taken from the world’s leading pros directly from the field. It will empower the development of your skills to a professional level and fire your imagination. Starting with the basics of how to plan a rewarding field trip, whether locally or afar, for one day or a month, and covering all aspects of camera handling and photographic technique including: how to make perfect exposures every time, ensure pin-sharp images of moving subjects, decipher the complexities of camera menus and controls, and break through the mysteries of composition.
Read More »
