Introduction to Light Painting Photography Technique

Tutorial and video on how to make pictures using the light painting technique more here…

Texture: The Secret Sauce of Atmospheric Photography

Knowing how to properly use texture in your images can make a profound difference to your photography. Composition, lighting, and tonal range are all important elements to consider…but by looking at the texture as well you can really ensure that the image you create is a true work of art……..more here Here’s a question for you…..why do photographers take long siestas in the middle of the day?

Light Painting

The idea of having a subject in a totally dark room and the camera on a tripod with the shutter open and painting the subject with light from a torch/flashlight is not new but the opportunities with digital to check your results immediately and make changes to exposure and/or the light painting process to correct problems makes it much more simple than working with film. This article from Light Stalking gives basic instructions, this is a fun way to make pictures and can lead to exciting visual discoveries and one way you can continue to photograph even if the weather outside is not conducive. Here is another article from diyphotography with additional ideas and information

The Transformative Power Of Light In Photography: Marie Laigneau

On Faded+Blurred there are some wonderful articles and spotlights on photographers, this caught my eye particularly as I have worked on a series called Eternal Light for more than 30 years

One of the things I absolutely love about photography is that initial feeling of discovery in seeing the work of someone new for the very first time. Recently, I came across the portfolio of Chicago-based street photographer Marie Laigneau, whose work is absolutely terrific. In addition to her fabulous photography, her blog offers up some valuable insights into refining the craft of photography. One such post prompted me to email Marie and ask her if she would allow me to share it here on Faded + Blurred. In it, Marie offers some great observations on how light can affect not only the aesthetic value of a photograph, but also our emotional connection to it. Enjoy.

One of the things I absolutely love about photography is that initial feeling of discovery in seeing the work of someone new for the very first time. Recently, I came across the portfolio of Chicago-based street photographer Marie Laigneau, whose work is absolutely terrific. In addition to her fabulous photography, her blog offers up some valuable insights into refining the craft of photography. One such post prompted me to email Marie and ask her if she would allow me to share it here on Faded + Blurred. In it, Marie offers some great observations on how light can affect not only the aesthetic value of a photograph, but also our emotional connection to it. Enjoy.

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The Transformative Power Of Light In Photography

by Marie Laigneau

Light – and the absence of light – is inherent in all photography. But light is not neutral – it shapes your image, it emphasizes your story, and can ultimately transform the reality to create new worlds as mysterious and powerful as those found in our dreams. Knowing when and how to use light is key to creating greater impact with your photography. If we look at the impact of light as a continuum, light can transform your image in four different ways:

1. Separation – At the very basic level, light acts as a separator between your subject and the background. Back to the core of our perceptions, the human mind can only distinguish elements in visual art if, and only if, they have different colors or shades of a similar color. In B&W photography, when colors are de facto absent from your composition, the only way to define your subject vs. the background is to create tonal differentiation. In other words, you need to capture elements with different values of light if you want them to be distinct from one another.

2. Emphasis – A more advanced use of light in your composition can allow you to emphasize your main subject. In other words, light can help create better stories if used smartly and appropriately. Think about how light, and its opposite the shadow, can contribute to your composition: leading lines, blockers, frames, negative space. All those elements will support your story by leading the eyes to what really matters – and get rid of what doesn’t.

3. Substance – Furthermore, light can create elements of its own – secondary actors that will help you tell a more subtle and powerful story: silhouettes, shadows, reflections. Those elements often convey more mystery and depth to your stories, helping to emphasize underlying emotions in your images. Those elements will create substance if they reinforce your existing story – which means, if they do not contradict the story in place.

4. Tension – The most powerful impact of light that can be found in photography is to create meaning. When new elements created by light – or absence of light – detract and contradict the story in place, you are in fact creating new meaning. This is probably the most interesting and inspiring use of light for street photographers. New meaning will be created if, at the end of the day, elements with contradictory meaning come together to form a greater whole. This is the power of opposites – stirring emotions in multiple directions to create, ultimately, meaningful tension.

1. Separation: Using light to dissociate elements in your photographs
The primary subjects in the photo below would be almost indistinguishable from the background if the sun was not highlighting their faces. Here, light creates that required differentiation between tones that is at the basis of our perceptions. Because the light in the background is subdued, the point of highest contrast (meaning, the point where there is the highest difference between light and dark) also falls on the subjects. The eye will naturally focus on the point of highest contrast, ensuring that my subjects are prominent in my composition.

 

Read more of this engrossing article here

 

14 Ways to Improve Your Photography in a Few Days

This article by Chase Guttman,  an award-winning travel photographer, whose love for travel and adventure has allowed him to photograph his experiences in over 40 countries, on the Lightstalking website is on the button, I don’t think I can disagree with any of his points.

Some might argue the point that photography is an art form.  Training your eye to see the world and translating your perspective visually takes time and patience. Yet, there’s also technique involved in creating arresting images. There are ways to quickly improve your photography and impact your creative vision. Let’s take a look at a few of them.

Here are just a couple of the points Chase makes

1. Read The Manual. Resist the impulse to cavalierly toss your manual in the trash as it holds a plethora of knowledge. For savvy shooters, manuals are the holy grail of photography books. They teach us the functions, capabilities and basics of our most important piece of equipment. The camera manual should be the bible for your gear. I recommend placing it in your camera bag. It will be worth the extra weight.

You could take our Understanding Your Digital SLR Course which would also help

3. Lighting Lessons in a Flash. Beginners seem to misunderstand the magic of a flash.  Keep in mind that most flashes illuminate only about ten feet in front of you. Furthermore, there are two main ways to optimally use flash — flash fill and bounce flash. In flash fill, you use the light source to attempt to fill the shadows created by natural lighting sources such as the midday sun. Bounce flash on the other hand is when the flash’s light is bounced off a wall or surface so it lights an indoor room evenly. To take better pictures, try to diffuse your flash by either aiming the light away from the subject or by using gels to minimize the light’s strength. Harsh or strong light isn’t kind on a subject’s face. Additionally, if the light isn’t diffused you may experience flash blow out, where your subject is a pitch white color and there’s a lack of highlights in your image. For maximum creativity and flexibility purchase an external flash.

We completely agree with this and have a course designed specifically to help people make better use of flash in their photography, here is a link to that course

©Keith Barnes 2012

Chase has more great advice on getting better at photography go here to see the rest

Full details of our course schedule can be found here

Click Here: 14 Ways to Improve Your Photography in a Few Days

Into the Sun – The Art of Stunning Silhouettes for Photographers

“One of the first things you are told by non-photographers when you buy your first serious camera is “don’t shoot straight into the sun”. Listen to this advice and you will be missing out on some the most emotive and powerful images photography can provide.

So what is a silhouette?

Oddly, the original term comes from French politics and has nothing to do with art or photography but today we take it to mean an image where the main subject is in complete shadow from a strong backlight. That backlight is most often the sun bit it doesn’t have to be, any light source, a flash, a lightbulb, even the moon can be used. Also the light source does not have to be present in the image, it just creates a very bright background, forcing the subject into shadow.”.….MORE   By Jason Row at Lightstalking

©Keith Barnes

Click Here: Into the Sun – The Art of Stunning Silhouettes for Photographers

“Light glorifies everything. It transforms and ennobles the most commonplace and ordinary subjects. The object is nothing; light is everything.”—-Leonard Misonne

Yes light is what photography is about, if the light works then almost anything can be your subject so learning to see light and to appreciate the qualities it has to illuminate a subject is a photographers task. These images on the Lightstalking website show the value of working with back lighting, or contre-jour as it is often named.

“Having a scene lit from behind can serve to bring out the shape and form of subjects in a beautiful way. Sometimes it can also diminish them. These examples of backlit and rim-lit photographs show that, with a little bit of skill, the results can be quite stunning. For some primers on how to achieve a great effect like these examples, check out our articles: “Do You Make These Mistakes When Using Backlighting?” and “How to Capture Stunning Backlit Portraits During the Golden Hours.”

all images ©Keith Barnes

©Click Here: 31 Creative Examples of Backlit and Rimlit Photos

Shooting Into the Sun

I find that photography has fashions in the way that food, music, and of course clothes do. Not so long ago the pages of glossy magazines were full of images that employed very shallow depth of field, just the very edge of the raddicchio in focus please. More recently off camera flash has been the thing, just about every aspiring photographer has decided that portraits out side with dark smouldering skies and a subject illuminated by harsh off camera flash is what is needed to be creative. In the last year or so it looks to me as if lens flare is where you need to be to be hot. Lots of hexagonal globes of orange light, flare so strong you can only just make out the subject, the feel of hot blinding light. I have nothing against these trends, I do find their over use and the band wagon jumping tedious, it is as if the young guns of photography are waiting to be told what the next big thing is before they can make inspiring pictures.

Anyway, I found this well constructed site called Great British Landscape, I think the title explains. Here I discovered a very full and well written article by Tim Parkin on lens flare, how to remove it rather than how to get it. There is an introduction by Joe Cornish

“Almost unbelievably now, it isn’t that long ago since camera and film manufacturers encouraged would-be photographers to take pictures with the sun ‘over the shoulder’. Quite simply (and understandably) they knew that there was a better chance of the picture ‘coming out’. What they did not say was that it was also a far less interesting way to use light!

Today, modern cameras make a mockery of the exposure problems facing our photographic forebears. Nevertheless, shooting into the light still brings with it a multitude of problems. Excessive contrast is one, while lens generated and exacerbated flare is another. In this article Tim describes and provides various methods for mitigating or eliminating most of the major flare types.

Why should we worry? Well, self-evidently flare is a distraction, an unwanted blight on the picture. Flare draws attention to the fact that the image was generated photographically by a lens. So it screams, inelegantly, !π@&*>photograph<§Ω! If we notice the flare we are not so engaged by the subject matter.

As always in any form of expression, there are exceptions. Film-makers have deliberately used flare for decades as a way of evoking a sense of blinding light, and heat… but in many cases that may have been because they had little choice. Light sources in the image area are always prone to creating flare, especially with complex multi element lenses like the zooms that film-makers typically deploy. There may be some circumstances to keep the flare, and let it play a role. But generally this will be for artists self-consciously referring to the process, to the medium.

Hopefully Tim’s article will inspire you to confidently take the risk of going ‘into the light’. In landscape photography especially, no other lighting is able to potentially create so much emotional resonance.”

Read the article here http://www.landscapegb.com/2010/09/shooting-into-the-sun/

35 Stunning Examples of Long Exposure Photographs

Most photography uses extremely fast shutter speeds, only allowing light into the camera for a fraction of a second, but when longer exposures are used there can be some remarkable results. Static objects are revealed in heightened detail, while anything moving becomes a blur.Long exposure photography entails using a long-duration shutter speed to sharply capture the stationary elements of images while blurring, smearing, or obscuring its moving elements.

The ability to take long exposures requires a user to use a tripod for optimum results (of course, some people prefer the hand shake look). The use of a tripod is essential because the inability for the human hand to stay still is truly remarkable. No matter how good you get, it will be very hard to hand hold a 1 second shutter release without very noticeable blur. As well as a tripod (or monopod in some cases could work), a photographer should make use of the timed shutter release. This will allow the user to set the shot up, and set a timer to release the shutter. Most cameras have the option of one or more timed shutter releases, for example my Canon 40D has a 2 second and 10 second wait. I usually use the 2 second release as this gives you just enough time to get your hands off the camera to not bump the shot. This is even more important on longer shutter times.

The technique of ‘light painting’ is the use of a long exposure while moving a light through a dark scene, recording the light source’s path, or shining light onto objects in the frame to highlight them. Enjoy the great examples below and get out their and experiment with your camera taking long exposures.  by Dustin Betonio ….…..more here

More Lightpainting examples

There are another 40 photographic artists showing their lightpainting work here