Light is your paintbrush

You are a photographer. Remember that. And that means that light is your paintbrush, the film is your canvas. You capture light. You capture moments that occur in the light.

The word “Photography” comes from the Greek. “Graph” means “to write.” “Photo” means “light.” As a whole, the word “photography” means “to write with light.” To ignore light in your photography dooms you to poor pictures.

You can use natural light in all sorts of ways in your photographs. Diffuse light can be flattering to a portrait subject. Overcast skies help you avoid harsh shadows and squinting when taking portraits. Bright sun can cause reflection and lens flare, if you tilt the lens toward the sun, and these can be used to artistically enhance your photography. Overhead sun causes shadow and is usually unflattering for portraits. But it can be perfect for snowy landscapes or painfully bright sea images. Sunrise and sunset, when the sun hits your subject horizontally, can make boring brick walls glow and ice shimmer with strange new colors. Generally, the light is warm in the mornings and late afternoons. The light is cold during the day. Watch the way a brick building can go from drab to glowing as the sun sets.

Experiment. Take a picture of a tree in the morning. Return to the same tree at noon and again at sunset. See how the light changes. Note where the sun rises and where it sets. You should always know about where the light source will be when planning a photo shoot. See how the angle of the sun reflects differently off the leaves and different times of day. See how the colors change. See how the sun looks through a leaf, reflected off a leaf, scattered by a tree full of leaves. Study the way the light moves through this one object. Learn to see, and then paint what you see.

And, of course, there are those beautiful sunrises and sunsets to photograph. Just a quick hint – they tend to look best with an easily distinguishable object in the foreground, like a person or a cactus or a tree. Focus on the sky, set your light meter off the clouds if you know how (if you have a point and shoot camera, make sure the center is pointed at sky and the flash is off), and click.

One note: light changes. The sun passes through its diameter in about three minutes when it is near the horizon. This means your photographs taken at sunrise or sunset must be either hurried or carefully planned in advance. There’s no “pause” button, and you can’t return to the same canvas after the light has changed.

Things are different in a studio. You can position lights the way you want them. You can bounce flashes off the ceiling. You can use colored filters. But it’s hard to make an image look as natural as an image made in real sunlight. So think about what your goal is with the light and its effect on your subject.

Doodle with light until your experiments come out the way you like. And ten you can really paint with light.