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 ...
Get Creative Portraits: Digital Photography Tips & Techniques now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.