Photography - Lighting

There have been entire books written on one very small aspect of lighting or another, so to do the subject justice in just a few pages is not easy, however I will do my best.

Although I have divided the subject up into different categories, the lighting you 'find' and the lighting you create for yourself, it is really the same thing. You need to manipulate the scene to create the effect you want, this might mean moving a light on a stand or moving your subject relative to the sun, or waiting for a better time of day to get the effect you want.

I once met a landscape photographer who, having found the scene he wanted to photograph, would pitch his tent and wait for the light to be right. Sometimes this would take two or three days. I'm not sure I would have that kind of dedication and I certainly don't have that amount of time, but it is worth spending a little time getting it right.

Take a look at Photography in Sunlight to see how you can take control of the lighting in your outdoor shots.

Check out Flash Photography for tips on how to improve those indoor snaps.

The third tutorial in this section is the Inverse Square Law. This tutorial is there for people who are using movable light sources, either floodlights or flash, to show the strange relationship between distance of the light from the subject, and the amount of light falling on it.