Photography Lighting

Lighting is probably the single most important aspect of photography, and is a huge topic. Every picture you take depends on good light. Mastering the basics of photographing a well-lit subject will help make your images useful for designers in everyday applications. When you know the basics, you can begin to explore the more dramatic possibilities of light: how the angle, power, and warmth of light effects your subject, stimulates emotions, and expresses your creativity.

Understanding light is a lifelong project. For beginning photographers, the key subjects are:
Proper exposure
Using and adapting to different light sources (natural and artificial)
White balance
Unexpected problems: Lens flares, reflections, and chromatic abberation

Let's explore these topics by looking at a few examples that aren't acceptable for our standards: shots that cannot find their warm home at iStock and need more technical improvement before being accepted into collection.

This article is the first in a series intended to supplement our existing photography resources with more in-depth and current information, focusing on common problems