Creative Portraits: Digital Photography Tips & Techniques

Chapter 4. Lighting Techniques

Working with Light

At a fundamental level, photography is about light—light reflected off surfaces, the ambient light in an environment, the way light makes things look. Without light there is no photograph. This is true no matter what the subject—you need light to illuminate a capture of a still life or mountain landscape just as surely as you need light to capture a portrait of a person.

And not just any old light! The difference between a just plain vanilla snapshot and a unique and wonderful portrait of someone is at least partially in the lighting.

Sure, it helps to have an interesting or attractive person to start with (pages 10-55), posed in a dynamic way (pages 110-119), and placed in front of a complementary background (pages 120-123). But without good lighting your portrait will not rise above the mundane.

A photographer can work with light actively or passively. In passive mode, the photographer observes the light, changes position relative to the subject, moves the subject if possible, waits—and when the moment is right makes the photo.

In active mode, the photographer sets up the lighting using a variety of possible light sources. But it's worth being clear that even when a photographer actively arranges the lighting, the passive skill of light observation is crucial. The usual procedure is to work by successive approximation: the light is arranged ...