As I had blabbered about on a previous blog entry, photography depends much on light. Without light, there’s practically no means to photograph an interesting subject. While we can photography in pitch darkness using infrared or night vision photography, light is still involved as these techniques try to enhance whatever light the camera or sensor can capture. So for this blog entry, I thought i’d share some more info on light. Mind you though that what you’d read below are not from my original ideas: what ‘ll be reading have been passed on to me by kind people who were kind enough to sit down with a schlub like me and explain patiently information that I need to know and learn.
Modifying Light
if you’re shooting outdoors that in sunny, harsh conditions you can use accessories to use with ambient light. For example, you’re sou shooting close-ups or portraits outdoors and you see that harsh shadows obliterate much of the detail, you can use reflector panels to bounce light into important subject areas. Reflector panels usually come in three colors: silver, gold or white. The quality of light will depend on the color you will use. White reflectors produce softer light compared to silver or gold reflectors and usually will provide subtle but sufficient lighting to important subject areas. Silver light reflects light much brighter than a while-colord reflector. You can use a silver reflector to completely fill in dark areas with the same intensity as that of the directional light you’re bouncing off the reflector. A gold reflector can produce the same intensity as the silver reflector but will cast a yellowish light on your important subject area. Mind you though that you need to keep in mind where to best position the reflector as a poorly positioned reflector can ruin a shot.
There would be times when you need to diffuse light or to “lessen the impact” that your light source brings, In these instances, you would need a diffusion panel. A diffusion panel normally comes in white but I’ve seen creative photographers that use different colors depending on their creative mood. The diffusion panel is normally placed between the strong light source and the subject. Diffusion panels will soften the light hitting the subject and will usually bring out vibrant colors of your subject while taming excessive contrast.
Physics behind Light and the use of a Polarizer
Yep, you read the header right: there is physics involved behind light. For the sake of our discussion, I won’t go into the hard, scientific facts of the physics behind light for two reasons: one, I really don’t know the hard, scientific facts and two, we’d probably be bored to death with the blabber. Let’s just stick to what’s simple. Just what is simple? Well, simple is we look at the aspects on the practical aspects of light that hit you CPL. Ah, you’re asking why focus on the CPL? Well…aside from the UV filter, you’re probably gonna buy a CPL so that’s the answer to your question. Fair enough?
As you learned in science class, light is primarily electromagnetic radiation that travels in waves. If the light source is from the sun, light travels in straight lines but vibrates in all directions perpendicular to their path. So when these lines hit the surface of a lake or the surface of a glass window, some of the light vibrates on a single plane which is mostly in the vertical. Therefore, if you use a CPL, the filter absorbs all the light vibrating in angles other than the angle in which you set the CPL. By absorbing the light, the CPL thus performs selective blocking of randomly polarized right and the result is the removal (partial or full) of glare. Now, if you turn the right from left to right or vice versa (depending on which direction you prefer), the filter controls the amount of polarized light that’s hitting your lens.
When playing with light, always remember that light gives sort of a “3D’ effect, To be successful in creating the image you want, you need to learn how to play with this “3D effect” to reproduce your subject in a flattering manner through the right atmosphere that would set the mood so that the right emotions and reaction will be enticed out of your viewer.
Happy shooting!
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