Creative Portraits: Digital Photography Tips & Techniques

Glossary

Ambient light:

The available, or existing, light that naturally surrounds a scene.

Aperture:

The size of the opening in the iris of a lens. Apertures are designated by f-numbers. The smaller the f-number, the larger the aperture and the more light that hits the sensor.

Barn Doors:

Black metal folding doors that attach to a light and are used to control the width of the beam of light.

Beauty Dish:

Circular light modifier with an opaque center that softens light, particularly useful in creating attractive portraits.

Bracket:

To shoot more than one exposure at different exposure settings.

Chiaroscuro:

Moody lighting that shows contrasts between shadows and brightness.

CMYK:

Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black; the four-color color model used for most offset printing.

Color space:

A color space—sometimes called a color model—is the mechanism used to display the colors we see in the world in print or on a monitor. CMYK, LAB, and RGB are examples of color spaces.

Composite:

Multiple images that are combined to create a new composition.

Cucoloris:

A wood, plastic, or cardboard sheet with cut-outs that can be placed over a light source to create a patterned effect.

Depth-of-field:

The field in front of and behind a subject that is in focus.

Diffraction:

Bending of light rays; unwanted diffraction can cause loss of optical sharpness at small apertures.

DSLR:

Digital Single Lens Reflex, a camera in which photos are composed through the lens that will be used to take the actual image.

Dynamic range:

The difference ...