Art Of Photography

Photography requires a few skills to make your prints look professional. One part of making a print professional is lighting. Lighting in photography takes a little planning and understanding of a few techniques. You best subject or object might not turn out that way if the proper light does not help to laminate the area. Below are a few tips on using light for photography.

Of course, art is a subjective thing. Many people would look at a Jackson Pollack “splatter” artwork and determine most definitely that modern art is not art because it “doesn’t look like anything.” And if you spend any time in the modern art world, you will definitely see something at some time along the way occupying space in a perfectly respectable art museum that, to you, could never be considered art.

So is it just a matter of opinion? To some extent, yes. But there is an art world and an industry behind it that depend on there being some standards upon which art is judged. One such standard is the intent of the artist. If you produce a photograph or an art work derived from a photograph that is intended to be viewed as art, then the viewer is obligated to try to see the artistic merit in it. Whether the viewer sees that merit or not may depend on the viewer’s abilities, how good you are at getting your artistic message across or many other factors.

But just wanting something to be art doesn’t make it art does it? As a layman in the art world, I sometimes go with the “I don’t know art but I know what I like” system of evaluating pieces I see. Art, after all, has a tendency to touch us in another place that is above and beyond the image. It is an emotional place, a place of reflection and understanding. Maybe we would say it touches our “soul”.

When shooting faces or other objects you usually want a three dimensional contrast. You will need to search for the planes and contours of the subject, especially in portrait photography. The planes and contours will help you determine the angle you will shoot the subject from. The shadows will often provide the three dimensional contrast if you find the correct planes and angle to shoot from. This helps with pictures that you want to stand-alone.

Landscape photography uses nature to provide the light and shadows. This is why you need to understand the light scale and temperature. Time is the most important aspect of using sunlight. To understand natural lighting you need to understand the affects the sun will have at certain times of the day. For instance if you are in a thickly vegetative forest the sunlight will have difficulty streaming in unless it is over head. You will have natural shadows in the forest and remember you can move around your subject to find the best angle with the sun.

It’s true that the mechanical skill that the guy at Wal-Mart might need to take baby pictures may be the same as a great photographic artist might need. But the objection doesn’t hold up because the same human language is used to create great poetry as it takes yell out obscenities at a baseball game. So it isn’t the skill that makes it art.

Whether you are a professional or a novice photographer, you want to produce some exquisite pictures with the proper lighting. With this in mind, choose your lighting according to your needs and the needs of your subject or object. Your pictures will be delightful with brightness when you use the best lighting situation.