One of the most beautiful types of light is free, simple to use, and always available. It's window light. I'm not referring to sunlight streaming through a window; rather, it is the diffused light from a north facing window or from an overcast sky that is so complementary to virtually all subjects.
(c) Jim Zuckerman
The columbine flower you see here is an example. I shot this today on my desk in front of my computer screen which was draped in black velvet. The sky was blue and the sunlight outdoors was harsh, but the north-facing window that illuminated the flower eliminated contrast problems because only softened light came through.
Shooting indoors meant that there was no wind, not even the slightest of breezes. That allowed me to use a lens aperture of f/32 and a 3.2 second exposure time.
Notes from the Editor:
Auto white balance is designed to remove color casts, exactly what you DON'T want for sunrise and sunset. AWB will not give you the color and warmth we expect with sunrise and sunset photos. Try shooting Cloudy for such images that will then have the color and warmth you saw in film.
(c) Rob Sheppard
This photo shows a sunrise in the chaparral of the Santa Monica Mountains outside of Los Angeles, California.
Notes from the Editor:
- Pro photographer Rob Sheppard teaches many excellent online photography classes at BetterPhoto, including Flower Photography from Snapshot to Great Shot, Guaranteed Better Photography, and Impact in Your Photographs: The Wow Factor.
- Rob is also a contributor to The BetterPhoto Guide to Photographing Light (co-authored by Jim Miotke and Kerry Drager).
Using flash at sunrise or sunset is a striking technique because the white/bluish tone of the flash contrasts dramatically with the golden light in the sky.
In the photo below, I used the flash off the camera to the left (as you can see from the shadow on the sand of the model's clothing). I felt that would be a much more attractive type of light rather than using the flash on-camera.
(c) Jim Zuckerman
I took this picture in the Thar Desert near Jaiselmer in the Indian state of Rajasthan during a photography tour. Since India is well known for color, I wanted to embellish the portrait of this dancer with a colorful background.
Editor's notes...
The white balance setting is important. Quite simply, amber reduces blue, so in order to intensify the blue sky reflection, the white balance is best set to “daylight.” The length of time and intensity of the reflections can vary. When Sue and I shot there alone before a recent Smokies workshop, we only had 10 minutes of intense reflections before beginning to fade. On this day, with the workshop group, it went on for about 30 minutes! We were thrilled to deliver these conditions to our workshop clients!
We normally don’t shoot very much during workshops. But I couldn’t resist grabbing a couple of shots, however, immediately deferring to any client needs, and calling attention to what I was photographing.
After the reflections, the game is not over. As many of us know, the amount of water is critical. Too much water, like after a heavy rain, can cover the rocks too much, resulting in a rushing white sheet of unphotogenic water. Too little water, like in July/August in the Smokies, is preferable to too much water because there is water running around exposed rocks, but still not optimum. The amount of water on this day had dropped from a couple of days ago and was perfect. Great scenes are always fun to photograph, yes, over and over again. The classic rock outcrop with the pot hole reflection is such a scene for me (see below).
Pro photographer Tony Sweet teaches a number of online photography courses at BetterPhoto.com, including A Quick Start to Adding More 'Pop' to Your Images and Image Design: Revealing Your Personal Vision.
Also, Tony contributed a number of beautiful images to the how-to book, The BetterPhoto Guide to Photographing Light, co-authored by Jim Miotke and Kerry Drager.
(c) Tony Sweet
During processing of the above image, as I was selecting Nik’s Viveza, I unintentionally selected Silver Efex Pro. When the image opened in the processing box, it was pretty much a finished black and white image! Serendipity is a welcome element, and I continued to finish processing the black and white accidental interpretation. Obviously, it was meant to be!
Editor's Notes:
One of the big mistakes photographers make when they try black-and-white is thinking that it is simply the removal of color. It is not.
Good black-and-white photography requires you to think differently, yet as you learn to see in black-and-white, you will find your color imagery improves, too. One important way of working with black-and-white is to look for tonal or brightness plus textural contrasts.
Everglades scene from Grassy Waters Preserve, Florida (this is in the northern Everglades, not the Everglades National Park). (c) Rob Sheppard
Notes from the Editor:
