What Makes A Lighting Special?

What Makes A Lighting Special?

by William Lulow

Today, I thought we would take a look at a couple of photographs that contain some special kind of light and see if we can determine what makes it special. Here’s one example:

What makes this lighting special is that the shadow area actually frames the light. The exposure was made in “spot” mode with the meter in the camera and the rest of the shadow areas were allowed to register as they normally would. There was just enough light entering this opening from the back to illuminate the edges of the dark rocks and give them a kind of “glow.” This is a scene I saw first and then thought about how to expose it for a maximum effect. (Canon 60D, 20mm fixed focus lens, 1/125th of a second at f/11, ISO 100.) These are conditions where you have to decide what you want to rendered properly exposed and what can just be natural. The lighting draws the viewer’s eye into the shot because of the dark foreground creating the “frame.”

Here’s another example:

This light is effective because the angle of the sun at sunset creates highlights on the under sides of the clouds. Also, the composition, keeping the horizon very low in the frame forces the viewer’s eye to the sky and the highlights then complete the effect. (Canon 20mm lens, camera on a tripod, gradient filter. 1/20th of a second @ f/7.1, ISO 400.)

And yet another (the more examples, the easier it becomes to find a pattern in how light determines the feeling of a shot):

Any type of back light will produce highlights. Also remember that in a two dimensional rendering of the real world, something light in color will stand out, while anything in the shadow area will almost go unseen. The eye is attracted first by the light and then led into the frame by the overall composition. Notice how the eye goes to the upper right corner of the frame and then is guided back to the row boats and finally up the ramp right toward you as the viewer.

One more:

I wanted to include one monochrome image to demonstrate how just the interplay of the lights and darks combined with the extreme low angle make this composition work. The light again, is from the back reflecting off the light-colored car in front and directing the viewer’s eye toward the cobblestones.

Again, when there is an interplay of lights and darks in an image, the light areas will be noticed first. Backlighting always creates interesting highlights which give the photograph some snap. We need to be aware of light that falls on any subject, because it will almost always dictate the kind of image you will make. It is the most important element in any picture.