Example 1 - Circle or ball?
Everyone who embarks on the study of photography meets a definition of
photography as “painting with light”. Whilst you certainly need light to be able
to record an image, lighting is not the be all and end all of photography. In
fact, too much lighting is detrimental for any outstanding image.
So, you need light to be able to record an image, but you need “dark” (otherwise
known as “shadow”), to give the subject being photographed some form. Using
light in all its directions and intensities to illuminate your subject is really
only part of the art of photography. The other part is to “paint with dark”.
When a young photographer first gets his ‘professional’ lighting equipment, he
(or she) tends to flood everything with enormous light levels and from all
directions, made possible by the electronic flash. Every part of every subject
is totally covered with the light, and the new young photographer is delighted
with the fact that there are no dark corners left unlit.
Unfortunately, there is something missing from these types of shots. And that is
a certain lack of form or shape. The only contrast in the highly illuminated
final photograph relies totally on color. Yellows on blue are very popular under
these circumstances. I, too, in my early days, have photographed a model in a
yellow dress against a blue doorway. Super shot, but missing something, but at
the time I didn’t know exactly what that was.
Example 2 - Extreme light and shadow.
The item that was missing is the third dimension. On any photograph you get a
two dimensional image - height and width. However, the third dimension, depth,
is totally missing. This third dimension, the so-called 3D effect can only be
produced by some visual trickery, which we call ‘shadow’. It is the shadow which
differentiates a circle from a ball, but if you blast the spherical subject with
so much light that there is no shadow, the final result has no shape, no depth,
no 3D effect (see example 1).
This is why the photographer has to use shadow to give the impression of the
third dimension. This makes a 2D image look like a 3D one, and is done by
careful manipulation of both the lighting and the shadows.
Take the outdoors situation, for example. We always suggest to the novices that
they should photograph early in the morning or late in the afternoon. Do not
shoot in the middle of the day. One reason for this is because in the early
mornings and late afternoons the lighting (from the sun) is directional,
skimming along the top of the earth’s surface, and makes for plenty of shadow.
In the middle of the day, however, the sun is directly overhead and does not
make for pleasant shadows, and even landscapes will look flat and featureless.
Look at some of the famous landscapes done by Ansel Adams and you will see what
I mean. For a photographer, the middle of the day is purely for siestas, not for
photography. It does mean that you get up at some dreadful early hours in the
morning to drive to the location, but the end result is worth it (((see example
2).
One of the problems with new digitals is the powerful on-camera flash. This pops
up at any time and overpowers the natural lighting, and being centrally mounted
makes for a photograph flooded with light, but no real shadow. If you disable
the on-camera flash, you will also get better photographs, other than after
sundown, where you need some light source to be able to register an image, but
try altering the ISO rating before using flash.
