Natural light

Natural light comes from the sun, even if it comes from the moon. Mid-day light has a colour temperature of somewhere around 5600 Kelvin, what our eyes and brain interprets as white. Our digital cameras work best in the “white” range even though Auto White Balance is turned on.

We need to pay attention to white balance because our brains have the ability to correct for white under many different lighting conditions but our cameras don’t share that ability. Auto White Balance comes close, but can fail spectacularly under some circumstances.

Electronic flash guns pump out clean white light, but it’s not “natural” light because parts of the spectrum are missing.

Clean mid-day white light in Queenstown, New Zealand, 2008.

A little bit of trivia – daylight colour temperature varies with latitude. At the equator mid-day light is slightly “warm” as we approach the poles, north or south, the light becomes progressively “cooler.” In the film days colour film was calibrated for the needs of the main market for a particular film type. Agfa colour film was balanced for northern latitudes to warm up the cool light.

Artificial Light

Shooting under artificial light brings a few concerns for composition. Artificial light may look white to the eye but not to the sensors in our cameras, colour film suffered from the same issues. Setting white balance to the lighting is important if we want to maintain a natural or neutral balance. Different light sources have different “white” values.

If you are shooting under tungsten light – yellow-orange cast
Shooting under “White” or “Natural” colour LEDs – slightly warm cast
Shooting under fluorescent “bright white” – blueish cast
Shooting under fluorescent “warm white” – yellow cast

If you are shooting JPG, make sure you dial in the white balance for the light you are working with. If you shoot RAW, you can fix white balance in post – most of the time.

If a flash is used, the white balance is best at daylight setting.

Indoor scene with good white balance, colours look natural, whites are white.

Effect of shooting under tungsten, or “warm,” lighting with daylight white balance.

Effect of shooting under fluorescent white lighting with daylight white balance.

A shot in the dark

Shooting in limited light raises technical challenges as well as composition. For low light photography, we will need to use a tripod, the heavier the better. If your tripod is a light weight travel model, use a weight suspended from the bottom of the tripod to add stability. Make sure that the weight cannot swing if there is any wind as this will create vibration, allowing the weight to just touch the ground works well. Other technical concerns centre around increased noise from high ISO and sensor heating. High ISO brings increasing levels of noise to an image, but we have to live with it. Sensor heating from very long exposures, say 1 minute or more, creates noise artifacts. Many digital cameras have a setting that can cancel out long exposure noise, the downside is that the camera must make two exposures for every image, one to capture the image and one to capture noise on a black background, the two being blended to cancel the noise effectively.

Shooting at night brings many new composition possibilities. Potential subjects include:

Light trails
City lights
Lanterns
Astronomical
Star trails
Moon
Milky Way

•Some people call this “available light” photography

The Pearl Tower in Shanghai, China – 2018. ISO 1600, 142mm, f 2.8, 1/125, handheld.

Downtown Calgary, 2007. ISO 100, 36mm, f 22, 40 seconds, tripod

Lanterns in Hanoi, Vietnam, 2018. ISO 3200, 70mm, f 4, 1/350 sec handheld.

Harvest moon near Calgary, 2007. ISO 500, 150mm f 5, 1/250 sec. Tripod

The Milky Way from Hornby Island 2015. ISO 6400, 24mm, f 4, 30 seconds, tripod.

Geometry

Use geometric shapes in the image to add interest.

Circles
Straight sided objects – squares, rectangles, rhomboids
Spirals
etc.

The arch or half circle. Like a tunnel, circular windows in an image draw the viewer in. Even in a still scene the circle or arch implies potential for movement.

Squares tend to enclose the scene and convey a sense of containment.

The undulating line can invoke rhythm. In this image, the curving road speaks to the difficulty of merging technology with wild places.

Be careful trying to merge too many geometric shapes into one image.

The spiral horns of the mountain goat pull the viewer’s eye along the curve to the animal’s eyes. Spirals imply circular motion.

Compose with colour

Colour has a direct impact on the brain, bright, bold, and strong colours arouse, pastels calm.

Sometimes colour is the image, sometimes colour is a supporting actor. We may choose to lift a colour out from the scene or suppress colour to make a point.

Bold colours – like a visual alarm clock.

Similar colours in pastel tones are more like a lullaby.

Using colour as the image.

Or colour can be a supporting actor.

We can emphasize a colour by lifting it out of a scene.

And we can suppress colours to emphasize a core subject.

A little colour theory might help

Colour theory helps us find colours that compliment each other. On a colour wheel, find colours that are on opposite sides of the circle, these are complimentary. Find complimentary colours in the real world and you have the start of a good image.

The colour wheel. Colours on opposite sides of the wheel are complimentary.

The red and orange of the setting sun compliment the blue of the sky. Look at colours on opposite sides of the wheel for drama.

Look at adjacent colours for harmony and peace.

Or look for colours from around the wheel.

Find patterns

Patterns in a scene can make an image more interesting. Our brains have an instinctive habit of seeing patterns in what would otherwise be called chaos, that’s why we see puppies in clouds. Patterns can be colours or lines in a landscape or architectural features.

The colours and lines in this terraced field might make the viewer think of a quilt.

Patterns with squares, columns, and colours.

The pattern formed by the spiraling steps pulls the viewer into the scene.

Is it interesting?

While composing an image, we need to ask ourselves a few question…

Does the image create interest?
Is it worth that second look?
Why did you look at the scene in the first place?

There has to be something of interest in an image, otherwise we probably wouldn’t bother to pursue it. If the scene or subject interests us, how do we capture that in the final image?

One method is to look for subjects or scenes that have some mystery or intrigue about them.

The look in the woman’s eyes invokes a sense of intrigue.

Scenes like this are like Alice’s rabbit hole, easy to fall into.

What has drawn her attention?

Where did the feet go?

Bring some life to the party

Including animals in a landscape can bring a landscape to life by adding another dimension.

The gazelle in the foreground adds interest and helps to give some depth to the image.

Scale

Including a familiar object in a scene provides a sense of scale. Choose reference objects that we instinctively know the size of, like people or vehicles.

Most people have the ability to recognize familiar objects and their relative sizes, even if there is a small margin of error. The person by the flag pole gives us a sense of scale allowing us to estimate the height of the lighthouse or the rock it is standing on.

With no recognizable reference, it is difficult to estimate how tall the finger is.

Add some people and the size of the fingers becomes easier to determine.