Basic Photography, 7th Edition

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Light: how images form

It was said earlier that you don’t have to understand physics to take good photographs. But understanding the practical principles behind photography and photographic equipment gives you a broader, more flexible approach to problem solving. It is also interesting. For example, the way light is manipulated to form images is not really very complicated – did you know it can be done with a hole in a card?

We start with the very foundation stone of photography, which is light. What precisely is light, and which of its basic features are helpful to know when you are illuminating a subject, using lenses and learning about colour? From light and colour we go on to discuss how surfaces and subjects look the way they do, and why ...