Lighting in photography is one of the most essential factors into taking great photos. Dive into the different properties that affect it and learn how you can apply this knowledge to improve your photography.
Table of Contents
What is Lighting in Photography?
Lighting in photography manifests how your light source is oriented with respect to your subject. This can be seen in whatever light source you use. There are numerous ways on how to set up your lighting in photography such as natural light, front light, back light, etc.
Properties in your photo related to lighting should be taken into consideration when processing your photos. These are exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, and blacks.
Exposure
Exposure is the amount of light reaching your camera’s sensor, creating visual data over a period of time.[1] We see this in photos through how bright or dark it appears. A photo is overexposed if it appears extremely bright that most of the elements in the photo looks white. On the other hand, a photo is underexposed if it appears extremely dark such that the elements inside the photo are too dark it cannot be seen at all.
Contrast
In essence, contrast means difference. This property of lighting in photography is the difference of tones and colors. If your photo has multiple colors then it could be referred to as a high contrast photo. Understanding the color wheel and its various relationships would yield better contrasting photos. Meanwhile, contrast in tones refers to the difference of brightness of the elements in your photo.
Highlights
Highlights refer to the already visible bright areas in your photo. These are points in the photo where your light source hit greatly. Changing the distance of your light source to your subject adjusts this. This property of lighting in photography helps with improving tonal contrast to your photos.
Shadows
Shadows in photography are the areas in which the light source is unable to hit. These are the dark areas in the photo that are always affected by the light placement. When this is utilized, it is able to not only create contrast but also provide depth.
Outside of photography, shadows manifest distance with relation to light. At certain times of the day, shadows appear to be longer or shorter. This is an example of how shadows could help portray distance.
Whites
Whites as a property of lighting in photography refer to the brightest part of the photo. The difference between whites and highlights are their brightness. Highlights relate to the bright areas of the photo while Whites relate to the brightest ones.[2]
Blacks
On the other hand, Blacks is the property of lighting in photography relating to the darkest part of the photo. In a similar way, Blacks and Shadows signify the darkest and dark areas of the photo respectively.
Post-processing of Photos
In this section, we’ll talk about adjusting these properties in software editing programs. Most photo editing software are capable of adjusting these properties of lighting in photography. Here, I demonstrate how the various adjustments of these affect the output of your photo. Adobe Photoshop Express – a free to use photo editing software by Adobe is the program used in this demo.
I. Exposure Adjustments
Bumping up the exposure property causes the whole photo to become brighter. Lowering it makes the entire photo darker. These images show how increasing (left photo) and decreasing (right photo) the value of exposure affects the image. A balance between the two is what we look out for!
II. Contrast Adjustments
Remember that contrast shows difference. Here is a look of how adjusting this property of lighting in photography affects the image. A high contrast value makes the photo more vibrant and makes the colors distinct. Meanwhile, in the low contrast photo the difference between the flower and its surrounding elements are not drastic thus making the photo look flat.
III. Highlights Adjustments
In adjusting the highlights, note that this affects the bright parts of the photo. After adjusting this, the area on top of the flower and the stem differ after adjustments are done.
IV. Shadows Adjustments
With shadow adjustments, the dark parts of the photo are changed. These are mostly found in the background. The most visible changes directly affect how depth is perceived.
V. Whites Adjustments
Toggling the “Whites” value changes the brightest parts of the photos. Increasing it makes the areas brighter while decreasing it reduces the original brightness of these areas.
VI. Blacks Adjustments
Blacks affect the darkest parts of the photo. Adjusting this property of lighting in photography takes those areas and adjusts how dark or bright it appears. In the photo, these areas are the shadows from the plant and also the background.
The Output
A combination of adjustments of these different properties increases the overall look of your output. First, understand how each property affects the visual appearance of your photo. Then, apply them through editing. Next, understand that photo editing software provides more properties that could be adjusted. A firm grasp on these properties of lighting in photography already makes your photos distinct.
Post-processing your photos also provides a style that you can consistently show. Saving the values on the different properties and applying them to your other photos make these photos similar in style. Have a try and see how good it appears when looking at these photos side by side!
In conclusion, lighting is a vital part of photography. A great understanding of it together with its properties benefits the improvement of your photos. Also, remember that knowledge alone isn’t enough. Application of these provides security to truly reap its benefits.
Practice taking your photos to the next level by post processing them with any editing software. Wide varieties of photo editing software are available that can definitely do this. See for yourself the kind of results you can get with adjusting the properties of lighting in photography!
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