P#22 Q1A: Understanding the Importance of Lighting in Photography

Controlling Your Photograph

John Siskin: As I mentioned a couple of moments ago, most people take pictures. They go out, they see something that interests them, they frame the subject inside the camera, and they press the button.

This is a fine way to work. It allows you to keep the memories of your life fresh and interesting and allows you to share them with other people, but what it doesn't do is give you real control over the images.

There are a lot of ways you can take control of your images -- even with natural light. For example, if you've got a picture of a person you can direct the person. Tell them where you want them to be, how you want them to look, and how you want them to hold their head. All of that comes under the heading of making pictures.

But one of the most powerful ways to make a picture is to take control of the light in that picture. Let's say you're outdoors at noon and the light is horrible. It's coming from directly over your subject's head and your subject's eyebrows are casting shadows across their eyes. The lips look pretty brutal and there's this long shadow under the nose -- the whole thing is about as attractive as a car wreck.

You can walk in there and add light to that situation. You can raise up the shadows, put a catchlight into the eyes, and suddenly have an image that flatters the subject. Why wouldn't you want to do that? Natural light is perhaps the wrong word because natural in our way of understanding English always sounds like good. You know, whole grain breads are natural and therefore good.

What we're really talking about is found light. Some people would call the indoor light of a 60 watt bulb natural light. I've certainly had students who did -- but it's still found light. What we want to be able to do is to make creative light. In order to do that, we need to think through the lighting in our heads and then use technological solutions to make that lighting happen in the real world.

In Closing

If you really want to take powerful pictures, you need to learn to control light. The wrong lighting in your shot can take a beautiful subject and turn it into something quite unattractive. The right lighting will make all the difference in the world. That's why it's so important to understand the ins and outs of lighting in photography.