10 backlighting tips

Tags

art, backlighting, fine art, Light, photoaday, Photography

I cannot claim to be an expert in any shape or form, but for my final post I thought I would add some tips I have found out along the way about backlighting.

1. Spot Meter. It is the way to go in order to light up your subject. If you meter in another mode your subject will be much too dark (unless of course you want a silhouette).

2. Think about the light. Shoot your subject against 
a dark background. This will make the most of the backlit parts of your subject, it helps them stand out and it also reduces the risk of over-exposing.

3. Reduce contrast. Soft backlighting when the sun is at its weakest or low in the sky will lower the contrast levels and reduce the chance of clipped shadows and blown highlights, just before sunset is a great time, such warm colour.

4. Overexpose. It is probably best not to trust your meter 100% when shooting into light. It is worth overexposing the meter to get the perfect exposure (unless you are going for a dark, dramatic, silhouette).

5. A lens hood is a must. It is best to shield the front element of your lens in order to prevent flare. unless of course this is the look you are after that is!

6. Study the light. Watch the light around you all day everyday. Think about how it falls when indoors; where and what times the light would be nice for portraits. If you want to achieve backlit images outdoors you will need to stick as close to sunrise/sunset as possible for those golden tones & wonderful soft light.

7. Move around your subject. If you don’t like the look you’re achieving simply move around your subject to change the way the light affects your image.

8. White balance. Try to get it right in camera! I use Kelvin . Generally I begin around 5590K while shooting an hour or two before sunset. This is just a starting point, then I will tweak if needed. 

9. Back button focusing. I think using BBF helps get sharper focus. I toggle then use BBF then press the shutter.

10. Wear white or use a reflector. Carrying a reflector can be awkward. You can always take the easy way & reflect some light back on to your subject by wearing white!

The grass is always greener!

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art, backlighting, fine art, garden, grass, Light, photoaday, Photography, water

“The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.” -Henry Miller

This week has just flown by, I love shooting water droplets on grass and what better way to shoot than by using backlighting, it gives such a magical feel to what could so easily be a very ordinary capture.

Dreaming

Tags

art, backlighting, blogging101, Light, Photography, portraits

“We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won’t do harm – yes, choose a place where you won’t do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

Well I am already on week 6 of my Light project and in this my second week of backlighting I have decided to look at portraits. One thing you must be careful of in general is lens flare. When you are shooting into the light, as you do with backlighting, you may get flare. This occurs when strong light rays go directly into your lens, hit the front element, scatter inside it and cause excessive lens refraction. The quality of the glass and the lens width contribute to the degree of flare. You can use your lens hood to help prevent such flare. Sometimes though flare can be a great advantage. It can dress up a photo, like the one above, which adds warmth and atmosphere.

Todays task for Blogging 101 is “develop a regular feature for your blog.” Which is quite apt considering Friday is the day I have been posting my year long project posts on “light sources”. It mentions creating a menu item or widget to highlight it, well I had this in hand already, so will be making this page live too now.

Until next week……….

Into the light

Tags

art, backlighting, blogging101, fine art, flowers, Light, macro, Photography

Every moment of light and dark is a miracle. – Walt Whitman

Faded beauty

The next four weeks of my 52 Week project I am concentrating on backlighting and different ways of using it in my photography.

Most guides on photography advise you to shoot with the sun or light source behind you to illuminate your subject from the front. This is in itself good advice which will often produce very good, evenly lit images. However, rules are sometimes there to be broken:-)

Simply put backlighting is when a light source is behind the main subject and you are shooting towards it. While some might find it counterintuitive to shoot into the light, the effects can be quite magical. By having the light behind the subject of the photo, the finer details of an object can be enhanced as well as the capture of some lovely silhouettes and sunbursts.  Landscape photography works well with backlighting, especially with translucent flowers and foliage or rim lighting of objects in the background.  Even atmospheric elements for example fog or steam can be intensified and therefore alter the mood of an image immensely.

To get the correct exposure it is best to use either Spot or Partial metering, which allows you to take a very specific meter reading directly from the main subject.

The top photo was taken in my kitchen looking out towards the bright sunshine coming in through my conservatory windows, I loved the way the details on the Orchid flower drying out were intensified giving it a very delicate feel and greater texture, more so I think than it would have been if I had shot the photo in the opposite direction (into the darker room inside my house). The photo below was taken at night and I used a torch to illuminate the petals from behind which I think highlights the layered petals quite well. Let me know what you think, do they work?

Shining Crysanthemum

Today’s Blogging 101 prompt was to create a blogroll, as I do not particularly want any more widgets on my sidebar I have decided to create a page of some of the sites I do visit regularly. I will constantly add to these as I know I have left quite a few off. Do you have any photography sites that you visit a lot and find helpful, I would love to hear about them?

Shadow Play

Tags

art, blogging101, Lifestyle, Photography, Postaday, shadow

Into the shadows

Skating shadow

My final week of using shadows, the first one to create a mysterious feel and the second one just because……….

In my Blogging101 course today we asked to look at our theme and try out a few different ones so I am off to play now, even though I have only recently looked I thought it might be worth looking again now I have been blogging for a few weeks.

Me, my shadow and I!

Tags

art, fine art, journal, Photography, shadow

“I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.” –  Plutarch

Shadow play

Concentration

Shadow boy 🙂

In the shadows

Until next time……………………………………………………….

Further into the shadows

Tags

art, fine art, journal, learning, Photography, shadow

“Never fear shadows. They simply mean there’s a light shining somewhere nearby.” – Ruth E Renkel

Sitting around

Into the shadows

Until next time……………………………………………..

Lost in the shadows

Tags

art, fine art, Photography, shadow

“Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it.

But above all, know light.

Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography.”

– George Eastman

The unclimbable stairs

I have a few New Year’s resolutions for 2015 and beyond, the usual get fit to improve my health and go on a diet, both of which I am doing well at so far. A few that are photography related are:

• To write at least once each week on my blogs (one is history and photo related and the other is this one!)
• To organise my photography kit and sort out my Lightroom library with tags etc
• Learn photoshop properly so that I am not just merely using it to watermark!
• Print more photos
• Take more photos of ME with my family – learn to take GOOD self portraits and not hate seeing them (a hard one I know, but I have to give it a go!)
• Shoot for my personal projects

My final aim this year is to shoot for ME, I often try and please others but for once I plan to be selfish and shoot just for me.

Patience is a virtue

I had a little “happy dance” moment  a few weeks ago when I stumbled across  an interesting collaborative website called Who We Become which is a group of photographers who use themes each week to grow their photographic talent and creativity. The first year of their project 52 started by concentrating on playing with light and learning to master its many dynamic forms, so I thought I would do the same to try and kick my photographic hiatus into touch.

For the next four weeks I will be concentrating on Shadows. I hope tthat by doing these projects for myself and spending several weeks at at time exploring a common overarching themes I will be able to really dig in deep, have fun, and take creative risks.

So what is a shadow? It can be defined as: a dark area or shape produced by a body coming between rays of light and a surface.

The Characteristics of a shadow are:

• A shadow can be deep in tone and have a hard defined edge.
• A shadow can also be broad, soft, and with a feathered almost imperceptible edge.
• A shadow can be twisted and manipulated by changing the shape of the object casting the shadow.
• A shadow can be almost translucent.
• A shadow can be coloured!
• You can do a lot of cool things with a shadow.

It’s over there!

Until next time……………………………………….