When Light Dances

Recently in this blog I have been putting more effort into providing tips for beginning photographers regarding the use of ambient and artificial light instead of posting more casual writing on shooting experiences. I received some positive comments so I began to consider reorganizing my thoughts and writing more organized presentations about basic photography skills.

To start with, let’s talk about composition.

Diagonal Rule

Let’s skip the theoretical part. The rule is to make your photo more interesting by showing your subjects as diagonal lines in your picture, simply because it’s more visually dynamic. Also, a portrait orientation instead of a landscape orientation looks more dynamic. On top of all this, make clever use of eye-catching colors or blown-out areas as added interest, like I did in Photo 1.

Imaginary line

Something similar to the visible diagonal lines in a picture, is the imaginary line that draws the viewer’s attention when looking at a photo. Photo 2 shows you the interior part of a Penang temple. This picture was taken with a 17-40 mm lens so you can see that the visual impact mainly comes from the intended distortion using a wide angle lens to capture something “up there.” Also, you can get a more interesting photo (Photo 3) if there is a human subject looking up at something off the frame. The imaginary line is formed as you follow the boy’s line of sight to the upper right part of the photo.

Against the “rules”

Needless to say, a wide angle lens is the basic and most convenient gear you need for creating visual impacts, especially when shooting buildings, like what I did in Photo 4. But you will find the pictures very dull if they are monochromatic in nature. So you’d better add colors to your picture by finding interesting and colorful mansions. As for Photo 5, I did not follow the “rules” by using the widest end of the 17-40 mm lens. Instead, I tried to make my photo more interesting by including the trees that block the mansions in the composition. To be fair, the mixture of light green, dark green, and the blue sky is the most important element that draws your attention.

Equipment Setup

Taking night shots in Penang is fun. There are plenty of interesting things at night such as semi-dark streets, lit hostels, and the beautiful sky— still visible in photos if you can capture it quickly before there is total darkness.

Initially, I intended to shoot some photos featuring the contrast between the blue sky and the yellowish streets. But as you can see in these photos, there was more to that in this neighborhood. Like what I shot in Photo 1, the color blue and yellow in the far end creates good contrast, yet the green plants against the white pillars in the foreground also added interest to this photo. They were in fact lit by my LED light panel held by my left hand.

Photo 2 was taken a bit earlier than Photo 1. The sky was brighter and you can still see the clouds up there. After a little while, I turned to the other side of the road to capture the mansions at a closer range. As you can see in the reference photo, the cafe’s light box was blown out. This happens often when you take photos of light boxes around the streets. So what you should do is simply mark a smaller f-stop and achieve something like Photo 3. In Photo 4, no light boxes were blown out; even the shape of the fluorescent lamp was visible. But in Photo 5, the fluorescent lamp was blown out. However, this was acceptable since it occupied a tiny part of the whole picture.

Equipment Setup

This video reveals how model portraits can be done using ambient light and bounced flash coupled with clever use of wide angle lens.

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I browsed the Net and found some tips on food photography that say something about lighting, props, styling, and other enhancing tricks. Yet I did not have the luxury of doing all the setups for the buffet food shown here. I was just visiting the hotel, and I spotted the food they displayed for the buffet dinner that night. So, I took some food shots with my 17-40 mm lens, which I rarely did, and came up with these pictures.

This is a revolving restaurant with big windows around, and the ambient light at around 4:00 p.m. was sufficient for shooting. What I did was just play around with compositions and focus. So you got dishes of salads with focus in the middle of the picture, and plates of food with a distorted perspective, etc. One more thing I did was to capture the late afternoon sunlight that shed light on reserved tables that did not belong to me.

Equipment Setup

It’s always frustrating when you want to shoot buildings on a sunny day. The same problem arises when you want to shoot landscape photos. The sky is always brighter than the other elements in the photo. You can use your software to rectify all this stuff but the problem can be solved to a certain extent by adjusting your camera positions. I shot Photo 1 around 10:30 in the morning. It is the early sunlight, the choice of subjects, and my position as related to the subjects that saved the picture.

As I mentioned before, if you want to take advantage of early sunlight, position the sunlight at your back and let the sun serve as front light to your subjects. In this photo, the subjects are the old mansions. This kind of lighting works to enhance the colorful subjects within your framing. If you are photographing modern buildings that are more monochromatic subjects, you may not get the best results. Luckily, I was in Penang, Malaysia. You can see in this blog that old mansions in this city are painted orange, green, light yellow, light brown, etc. So what you see are pictures with colorful elements lit by sunlight, with contrasting orange and blue in the same picture as shown in Photo 1. And for Photo 2, there are more colors involved that make the picture more interesting. At times, you may find subjects like those shown in Photo 5, mansions that are dull in color, yet there are colorful elements such as all those banners around. Then you can still get an interesting picture.

Equipment Setup