Lighting Digital Field Guide E-Book

Brian McLernon

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

Essential lighting guide for users of compact cameras and dSLRs

One of the most important aspects of photography is lighting, but getting the lighting right is tricky.  When should you use flash? Are a camera’s automatic settings dependable? Should you use reflectors or diffusers and where do you place them? This handy, portable reference will show you when, where, and how to create and capture perfect light, every time. The book includes a color checker card to help you maintain true color, as well as examples of stunningly-lit photos of people, wildlife, and landscapes to inspire you.

• Walks you through the essentials of lighting for digital photography
• Helps beginning and intermediate photographers leave the safety of automatic settings and confidently control lighting themselves
• Shows how to evaluate natural light, decide when to use flash, and how and when to use diffusers or reflectors
• Includes a tear-out color checker card to help you maintain true color in your photographs
• Comes in the handy, portable Digital Field Guides size, perfect for camera bags

Create and capture the perfect lighting every time, with Lighting Digital Field Guide!

Leseprobe

Lighting Digital Field Guide

Lighting

Digital Field Guide

Brian McLernon

Lighting Digital Field Guide

Published byWiley Publishing, Inc.10475 Crosspoint BoulevardIndianapolis, IN 46256www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2011 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN: 978-0-470-87822-4

Manufactured in the United States of America

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About the Author

Brian McLernon is a commercial freelance photographer, educator, and writer based in Portland, Oregon. Originally from New Jersey and educated in Arizona, Philadelphia, and New York City, he shoots primarily for editorial, commercial, corporate, and lifestyle clients. He is the author of three previous Digital Field Guides, the Canon EOS 5D Mark II Digital Field Guide, the Canon Speedlite System Digital Field Guide, and the Canon PowerShot G11 Digital Field Guide.

To share his passion for photography, Brian conducts workshops in photography and lighting for Portland Community College’s adult education series. He is often honored to be a guest speaker for several artistic associations, communication groups, and business organizations and enjoys speaking to student groups as well. When he’s not photographing in the studio or on location, Brian spends time with his wife and daughter, family, and friends, camping, travelling, white-water rafting, cross-country and downhill skiing, and, of course, photographing nature and all kinds of motorsports.

Credits

Acquisitions Editor

Courtney Allen

Project Editor

Kristin Vorce

Technical Editor

Ben Holland

Senior Copy Editor

Kim Heusel

Editorial Director

Robyn Siesky

Editorial Manager

Rosemarie Graham

Business Manager

Amy Knies

Senior Marketing Manager

Sandy Smith

Vice President and Executive Group Publisher

Richard Swadley

Vice President and Executive Publisher

Barry Pruett

Project Coordinator

Patrick Redmond

Graphics and Production Specialists

Samantha K. CherolisAndrea Hornberger

Quality Control Technician

Lauren Mandelbaum

Proofreading and Indexing

Sharon Shock Penny L. Stuart

For Dean Collins, who started me out on the light path.

Acknowledgments

Although only one name appears on the cover of this book, a project like this brings an entire team of people together in seemingly unrelated ways who all contributed to its creation. My hearty thanks go out to all those friends, clients, and associates who posed for many of the images in sections of this book and to those who contributed conversation, access, equipment, and ideas that helped make this book even better.

First, to my wife Gayle and daughter Brenna, who allowed me to disappear into my studio cave to shoot and write and make my deadlines, all the while providing those smiles, support, and laughter that make my life a joy.

To Bob and Shirley Hunsicker of Pharos Studios, my early mentors in studio photography and business, whose guidance and friendship contribute immeasurably to my photographic career.

To photographer Rick Becker of Becker Studios in New York City, who long ago opened his Pandora’s box of lighting tips, techniques, and special effects and shared with me the secrets of studio lighting.

To Michael Durham of the Oregon Zoo for providing access to the zoo and kind encouragement while I was writing this book. An incredible photographer himself, Michael strives to photograph that which can’t be seen by the naked eye.

To David Honl, Rachael Hoffman, Phil Bradon, Craig Strong, Kari Friedman, and Michael Paul Wyman for providing me with equipment and technical details about some of the photos and lighting equipment described in this book. You guys truly rock!

To Aaron McNally for assisting in several of the lighting setups and photo shoots, and to Ted Miller, Adrienne Luba and Kathryn Elsesser, Rhonda McNally, and Keegan Mullaney among others who graciously posed for several portraits in this book to describe various lighting angles and styles. I couldn’t have done it without you.

To photographers Galen Rowell, Dewitt Jones, George Lepp, and John Shaw, who conducted workshops that keyed me in to the technical considerations of natural light and shared concepts and approaches to nature photography that I still call on today.

To photographers David Hobby, Joe McNally, Syl Arena, Chase Jarvis, and John Harrington, who share their photographic expertise through blogs and Web sites in their selfless desire to see all photographers succeed. I am indebted to them for sharing their experiences that enhance all I attempt to accomplish in photography.

To Courtney Allen, my acquisitions editor, for this edition and first contact at Wiley, for taking me under her wing and providing friendship and encouragement and bringing me into the Wiley fold — may you rock to the metal always.

To Kristin Vorce, my project editor, for her attention to every detail of this book, including her advice on image selection, captions, and sentence structure. Her contributions never failed to make this book better. Also many thanks to Ben Holland, my technical editor, for keeping me on track and helping me explain myself better.

Finally, to Dean Collins, the master of lighting and Photoshop guru who showed me that photography is all about the light, not the gear. His knowledge of how to manipulate light and his entertaining teaching style have made a lasting impression on me. Though Dean is no longer with us, I am forever in his debt.

Introduction

Light. You can’t make a photograph without it in some form or another. Although light has the ability to give your photographs power and definition, do you consistently consider the quality of light before pressing the shutter button? Sure, you’re attracted to your subjects for who they are or to sunset and sunrise photos for the colors of the sky, but what about the quality of the light that defines these situations? Is there some other object or subject you could put into that light that would yield another great photo? That is the road you will be traveling with this book.

Welcome to the new Lighting Digital Field Guide. This book will put you on a new path of understanding and appreciation of the power of light in photography. Light comes in thousands of flavors and each one can be used to give your photographs more power when used correctly in the proper situations. By developing an awareness and sensitivity to light, you can begin to come up with picture-taking scenarios that make the best use of the light at hand or to take advantage of that light by quickly making camera exposure adjustments. This book is for those beginning photographers who are comfortable with their cameras but looking to take their photography further by searching out beautiful light.

Seeing Light

Many years ago during an eight-hour photo workshop in New York City, the other attendees and I were challenged by the presenter to “see the light before taking the photo.” By the sound of the audience’s reaction, it appeared that many of us were confused, not really knowing what we were supposed to be looking for. As the many different qualities of light were explained and the numerous examples shown, it dawned on our group just how powerful a medium light can be and how important developing an understanding of it is. I realized that most of my previous thoughts about photography focused too much on camera and lighting gear (that which I did not own especially) and not really on light and its qualities. Almost overnight, I began to think of photography in a profoundly different way.

What began that evening and continued for many months afterward was a paradigm shift in my approach to photography. I began to really work hard to “see” light and all the subtle variations in natural light and also how to mimic those subtleties with studio flash equipment. Camera controls and settings were still very important, but now there was reasoning behind those decisions based on the quality of light I either had or wanted to create. All it took was noticing the quality of the light, where it was coming from, which way the shadows fell, and various other nuances. I contemplated lighting before considering what lens, ISO setting, aperture, or shutter speed to use.

What You’ll Learn from This Book

Light from sun has the power to oxidize paint, blacken silverware, or burn your skin. Yet this same light can be used for beautiful purposes as well, such as creating dynamic three-dimensional effects in your photos. This book begins by describing the many qualities of natural light, what they are called, and where to find them. You learn how the direction and color of light affects your photos. Then you move on to determining which camera controls best complement the light’s qualities. Full chapters are devoted to shutter speed and aperture, explaining how the light on your subject will often tell you which to choose first in order to get the effects you want.

After you learn about natural lighting and ways to get the quality of light you want from the sun outdoors, it’s time to move into the studio to get acquainted with many of the types of equipment, tools, and light modifiers found there, and how and when to use them. The popularity of the small external flash units has risen enormously in the past several years, and this book extensively covers the exploding world of small flashes, referred to hereafter as speedlights. (Canon calls them Speedlites and Nikon calls them Speedlights, but in all my research I have found the speedlights label to be the most generic.)

As you begin to understand just how important and powerful light in your photography can be, look to later chapters that cover the most popular situations photographers find themselves in, namely shooting sports, concerts, landscapes, night scenes, portraits, products, weddings, wildlife, and pets. These chapters discuss specific considerations and practical pro advice for each genre.

It is my sincere hope that this book develops awareness in you that while good quality equipment is necessary, your understanding of light and of the varied methods used to manipulate and shape it, will help make your images much stronger. By “seeing the light” before taking the photo you begin to make conscious decisions when using the camera exposure settings to control and harness that power.

A long time ago, I came to a fork in the road of photography between purchasing more photo equipment or becoming a student of light. Knowing full well that good equipment is still important, I chose the light path. It is my honest desire that by studying this new Lighting Digital Field Guide, you will, too.

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Chapter 1: Understanding Light

Capturing light is the essence of photography. In fact, the name used to describe the craft, photography, is a combination of the Greek words photo meaning light and graphi meaning writing, so photography is fundamentally light writing. You use lenses and cameras and storage devices to capture those images that tell your visual stories and for many photographers, that’s what photography is all about — the gear. I know I was certainly that way when I started my photography career. I thought photography was more about the gadgets than actually capturing light in all its many forms. Fortunately, at some point I began to see light in a new way and that shift has profoundly affected my photographic work and made it more fun. I want to share that shift in thinking with you, along with various practical ways for you to manage, manipulate, and expose the light.