The basics of digital photography: Getting the proper kind of light

The basics of digital photography: Getting the proper kind of light

What exactly is photography? Yeah, as usual there can be many definitions based of many different opinions, but one thing is common in them all, photography is a form of art, an art of expressing yourself through your shots. To properly achieve it, you need to practice, practice and practice, but at the same time this learning, while steep at times, can be fun.

Indirect sunlight, reflected off the mist in the Bhutanese mountains.
This generates a milky effect as evident here. 

Photography is in a way the blending between art and technology. On one side you take the shots that 'matter' to you, on the other hand you're always able to modify your capture, using whatever software you have. And a lot of it really depends on how well you capture a proper shot.

No shot is perfect, but we can always try to make it better than before. And to a large extent, the quality of a shot is determined by the 'light' that you use. What your camera does is just capture the light reflected off or emanated by the subject, to get the feel of the original subject itself. Thus, at the most basic level, photography is all about the lights. No matter what camera model you have, if you can create or find a properly lit environment, lit properly by the proper kind of light that you'd like for your shot, you're going to get a great shot. So, to say it again, the light matters.

A midday shot, notice how white-pixelation occurs in the background and foreground alike

So, what are the different kinds of light? At the basic level, there are two kinds of light, namely the natural light, i.e. the light from the sun, moon etc. as well as the artificial light, i.e. light from your camera's flash, from an electric bulb or a tube light. So, first of all, let us delve into natural light, to study it well.

Natural light is most commonly sunlight. Sunlight is, as all of us know, the light coming from the sun. Being at optical infinity, sun gives us the light that is made up of nearly parallel beams, equally distributed all over. Natural Sunlight is of two main types, direct sunlight and indirect sunlight.

Early morning sunlight used properly with manual focusing.
The background, though well-lit, loses sharpness and detail.
This makes the subject even more prominent. 

Direct sunlight: It is the most common type of light from the sun that we get, standing under a clear sky. But the time of the day changes the amount and quality of light we get from the sun. Usually, direct sunlight is categorized into four types depending on the time of the day. These are:

1. Midday light: This is the harsh, bright light that we get during middays, giving rise to short but dark shadows. Contrast is usually very high, and so is brightness. We should be especially careful not to take personal portrait shots at this time, because that can create dark shadows in the form of ridges under the subject's nose, eyebrows etc. But landscape shots taken with high brightness setting usually seem fine. Detailed and sharp shadows however might ruin an otherwise good shot, although they can be softened later using post-processing software.

Golden Hour shots often lose detail due to wrong focusing and exposure

2. Early afternoon and late morning light: The sun doesn't get overhead yet, and we get somewhat softer shadows. This time is especially nice for outdoor artistic photography, obviously using post-processing software later.

3. The Golden Hour: This is possibly the best time for outdoor photography using natural light. Shadows get long and soft, and in your shots you can see the shadows getting 'merged' into well-lit areas. The natural softness of shadows and penumbric exposure gives you natural advantage to try out creative photography. The golden hour usually lasts for 1 hour after sunrise, and for 1 hour before sunset. There is a soft, golden-red light everywhere, and exposure should be increased. If you're getting blurry images, be sure to change your ISO parameter's value.

4. The Blue hour: This is the 30-minutes duration of time after sunset, or before sunrise. The sky turns deep blue, and the shadows become very less detailed. As Kat Eye Studios puts it nicely, this is especially nice for shots contrasting city lights with natural, bluish light of the sky. Indirect light from the  sun, reflected off the clouds and dust particles in the horizon, creates a sort of beautiful bluish effect in whatever shot you take. But since light is usually low, so exposure should be increased to get quality shots, by capturing more detail.

A shot taken during the Blue Hour. Notice the blue tinge of the skies.

Moonlight: This is another source of natural light. The contrast should be kept low, so as to prevent much difference in between different subjects while taking a landscape shot. Exposure should be increased, so that the camera captures more detail. We usually get a silvery effect on our shots automatically, and shadows are usually dark but soft around the corners.

Indirect sunlight: It is the light of the sun reflected off a secondary 'source', which may be the clouds on a cloudy day, a simple reflector, water or simply your wall. Indoor photography is especially easy and relaxing, especially through glass panes of your window. Multi-colored glass panes can automatically provide you with beautiful and colorfully lit environments. For example, I have translucent white window glass, and the light that comes through them is usually a light gold. This allows me to do some quality photography even inside my apartment. Another good source of indirect sunlight is a shade. If you stand under one, there is the irregular reflection of sunlight that casts evenly distributed light over your subject. In my opinion, both the photographer and subject should stand under a shade during midday, and focus should be strictly maintained on the face of the subject. Some of the background information will be lost due to high contrast, but that is not important compared to the degree of detail you're going to get concerning the subject's face.

Golden hour photography. Notice how long the shadows
get, with softer edges.

Now, let us try some alternate sources of light, the artificial lights. These lights are usually bright but create detailed and visible shadows. The exception however is fluorescent light. So now, let us study some of these artificial lights.

1. Incandescent lights: These are the most common sources of light we get. Usually the most common electric bulbs hanging from your ceiling, these bulbs should be used in groups, arranged properly in a rectangular shape, to properly light up your environment. A single incandescent source, no matter how powerful it may be, will produce start contrast in your shots, will well-pronounced shadows and too much loss of detail. What the camera does is fill the darkened areas of your shot with blind pixels, i.e black pixels. This causes loss of detail in the background. Exposure should be kept low if the light source is too powerful, or else white-pixelation might occur, i.e. too many bright areas of your shot will get replaced by white pixels.

2. Fluorescent lights: This is the light we get from common tube lights, usually. It creates the typical office-room effect. Since the light source is long and thin, we get very soft, almost invisible shadows. There is a greenish-blue tinge in most of the shots taken in these lights. Good for artistic portraits, this light source however shouldn't be used if you need too much detail.

3. The camera's flash: It tries to mimic the effect of midday sunlight, and also helps you automatically normalize your shot. Evenly distributed light falls on the subject, making darker edges slightly more lit and balancing too much white shots. But at the same time, it leads to loss of colours, as flash light is white by itself, a combination of the visible solar spectrum. I would suggest not using the flash, except when it is absolutely required.

For novice photographers, getting the proper kind of light and adjusting the camera properly for the environment can be frustrating at times, but as we practise more and more, we're bound to succeed. One basic rule of thumb is that, the camera's flash should be used minimally, and exposure + ISO setting should be adjusted for the proper timing of the day (in case of natural light) or the proper environment (in case of artificial lights).