Lord Thompson Manor Making Pictures

Author: Michael Russell
The word photography means “writing with light”. Light is essential to making photographs and you must understand how to use it in order to make your pictures as interesting as possible. There are two basic types of light: natural and artificial. The first comes from the sun, the other from man-made sources.

Natural light generally refers to daylight, although moonlight qualifies too. For photographers, light during the day can vary. There might be a bright or hazy sun that causes shadows. Or it could be heavy and overcast. Daylight also exists in the shade, where subjects are shielded from the direct rays of the sun. Daylight exists indoors, too so not all natural light shots are taken outdoors.

Artificial light is illumination produced by man. It may be an ordinary light bulb, a fluorescent tube, a bright photoflood, a tungsten halogen lamp, an electronic flash, or many other types. Since these types of illumination can be used outdoors, too, not all photographs shot with artificial light are taken indoors.

Photographers also talk about ambient light, existing light and available light. Regardless of the term, this is light - whether natural or artificial- that is already present in the subject area. A photographer who shoots by ambient, existing, or available does not provide any of his own illumination.

Just as there are types of light, there are types of lighting that have special significance for photographers. For instance, directional lighting, such as that provided by the sun, flash, or tungsten halogen bulbs in reflectors, is more precisely described as being front lighting, side lighting, or back lighting.

Front lighting is the most basic for photographers, although not the most appealing. A long-standing rule that says to put the sun at your back so it shines on the front of your subjects was established for good reasons. Early films and camera lenses were not as fast as those in use today; they required considerable light to make an exposure. Old time camera and film manufacturers knew that bright and direct sunlight on the subject would provide an adequate image on the film, so they recommended it. Also, a subject illuminated directly from the front shows every detail because it is uniformly lighted.

Front lighting is still popular today, but many photographers find it unsatisfactory for portraits and other subjects. The reason is that front-lighted subjects appear ‘flat’ because there are no shadows to give a feeling of depth. For this reason, front lighting is commonly referred to as flat lighting. Another disadvantage of front lighting is that people often squint because the sun is shining directly in their eyes.

Photographers have found that changing their camera angle or the position of the subject so that the main illumination is from the side gives more depth and interest to many of their pictures. This is especially true when shooting close-ups of objects. Side lighting can illuminate the left side or the right side of the subject, depending on your preference.

Backlighting refers to situations where the main source of illumination is behind the subject, shining in the direction of the camera. Backlighting requires careful exposure readings so that the front of the subject will be properly exposed. If a reading is made of the backlight itself, the subject will be underexposed and appear as a silhouette. With portraits outdoors, backlighting allows your subject to have a natural expression without squinting because bright light is not shining on his face or into his eyes.

When strong directional light comes from both sides, the technique is known as cross lighting. It is normally used in studio situations with flash or tungsten studio lights, not under daylight conditions.

By: Sharon Cutajar
The choice between digital or film cameras is an extremely personal choice. Digital technology has made photography cheaper in the long run and easier than ever before.

There is an instant gratification with using a digital camera to take photographs. You can shoot the image, review, and know immediately what needs to be changed. This can be a lifesaver with landscape photography; imagine being in a once in a lifetime location or having an especially delicate light. If you have made a mistake with film photography, you may not discover it until the roll has been developed. With digital, you know instantly.

Digital cameras are also useful if you are a beginner. If you can identify a problem with your photograph instantly, you can then go ahead and correct it, or at least try to. With film there must be a development stage, and by then, you may have forgotten what settings you used, and what the problem was.

Also the developing is cheaper and easier, provided you have a computer and printer. Images can be downloaded, emailed and adjusted on programmes such as Adobe Photoshop in an instant. They can be printed cheaply in a professional or online lab, or you can print them at home on photo paper. There is no need to print every image, just the best of the bunch.

The downside to digital?

Firstly there is the issue of preservation; there are many tales of hard drives crashing or being stolen, or of CDs that held thousands of images being damaged. Unlike film, where there is the negative to rely on, digital images are intangible and most of the time, stored on computers.

The answer to this is to always create back ups of your work. Another good idea is to upload them onto an online server or photo sharing site - this means that if all your computers broke and you sat on all of your CDs, a copy of the images still exist in cyber space.

With a digital camera you have to be careful that you do not spend so much time editing an image, or deleting unsuitable ones that you forget to actually spend time taking a good picture. It is always worth keeping images you think are poor at the time and take a good look at them on a full screen monitor as you cannot always see the small details on the camera’s LCD screen.

Another important point with digital cameras is that there is a ‘magnification’ factor. This means that if you use a film lens with a digital camera, you may not necessarily get the image you expect. This is because digital SLRs have a smaller sensor than that of a 35mm film camera negative (which is 24×36mm). So using a film lens which covers the 24 x 36mm format on a digital SLR which has a 15 x 22mm sensor effectively makes the image slightly cropped, or appears longer in focal length (more of a telephoto look!).

Different brands have different multiplication factors. With a Nikon, you need to multiply the lens length, which is written on the lens (we will learn more about this later) by 1.5, with a Canon it is multiplied by1.6. You can check online or with the manufacturer of your camera to see what you need to multiply your lens length by.

This is more of a problem with wide-angle lenses for digital cameras, as a 28mm wide angle becomes smaller once the multiplication sum has been done. There are new, made for digital lenses being released to address the wide angle issue, but for now, they are expensive to purchase.

When it comes to film cameras, there are still those that prefer the look of film images to digital. This is a personal preference, although film purists say they love to zoom into an image and see the grains of silver as opposed to a mush of pixels!

With a film camera, there is the excitement of receiving a set of prints back and seeing how well you did. If you have a manual SLR camera, which does not require heavy rechargeable batteries, there is the benefit of not having to carry spare power sources, as digital photographers have to do. You can easily go to a local store and buy standard fit batteries for your film SLR camera.

Memory cards, which digital photographers must buy to store their images on, can become corrupt without notice, which means that their images are irretrievable. There is unlikely to be this problem with film, although developing labs do make mistakes and develop a roll badly.

Also, when you are choosing a roll of film, you must pick an ISO rating (more on this later). If you have a roll that has 36 frames and the weather conditions suddenly change, you cannot just swap the film over to a more suitable type - you have to finish the entire roll first.