Carolyn 081
We asked our readers in the Your Photo Tips.com Flickr Group to give us some of their best one sentence photography tips and we had a great response! For the next few weeks I’ll be elaborating, in my own words, what those photo tips mean to me and how they can help you become a better photographer. So if you missed the original post you can find it at 16 Quick Tips For New Photographers.
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See The Shadows
Photography is often described as “painting with light”. Light is what makes it possible for a camera to record the information needed to produce an image whether it’s in digital form or on film. Of course with light we get shadows. Shadows are a very important part of photography that can often go overlooked.
RKD Photography said
See the shadows.
Because this quick tip was provided by RKD Photography I will assume he was speaking of shadows in portraiture.
When creating portraits outdoors you’ll want to make use of a “fill flash” to eliminate shadows from under the brow and nose. You may have heard the term “raccoon eyes”. There are many techniques to using a camera mounted flash to battle those unwanted shadows, but by far the easiest is to set your on camera flash to 1/2 power.
Use the shadows to your advantage at every opportunity to enhance the visual beauty of your subject. Face them at a 30-45 degree angle to the sun to create depth and dimension to the image. Most often, the best images use light and shadow to create a more three dimensional image, something that really pops!
There are other things, of course, that you can do with shadows in photography.
- Why not take a great image of just the shadow of your subject elongated against the street as the sun is a little lower in the sky?
- Use a geometrical shape, like a fence, to add shadow lines on your subject.
- Placing your subject in the shadows completely will create softer light as the sun is no longer direct and pushing hard light on the subject at hand.
Of course, as with everything else in photography, it’s important to experiment with shadows. Take a closer look at where the shadows come from, what shapes they create, and whether or not you should eliminate the shadows all together.
Photograph Carolyn 081 by RKD Photography
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It’s true that I had never saw the shadows in the way you describe above. For me the shadows are quite bad because mostly I do landscape photos, but I will try to use your tips&tricks to see what will result