Choosing the right lighting and creating contrasts in your picture is a great way to add the effect of great depth to it. That is why I would like to share with you a number of different ways to control the lighting of your photo and add the right amount of contrasts to it.
For instance you could want to show your viewer the impressive contrast between an area of a street that lies in the shadows and another part of it that reflects the bright sunlight. In this case you can shoot (indirectly) against the sun to capture the most intense reflections of sunlight on the street possible. You can also try to underexpose your picture to have the sunlit parts of the street appear in distinct colors and make the shadows look exceptionally dark. If you rather want to point out the overwhelming brightness of the sunlit parts of the street, I would recommend you to overexpose the photo. The brighter parts will then look highly luminescent, but might not appear distinct anymore, whereas the overshadowed areas will look relatively natural.
Whenever I take photos of motifs with extreme contrasts, I try three different versions: one that allows the darker parts to appear natural, one that displays the brighter parts naturally, and one that represents a compromise of both effects. Having tried these different ways, I might choose to focus on one version and do several shots with this exposure setting. In order to decide which version to focus on, I ask myself: What part of the image seems most important to me? This is usually the area I want to be exposed properly. Instead of a particular area you can also choose the effect of excessive brightness (or darkness) as your actual motif and base your exposure setting on that decision. If you are not focusing on displaying an extreme lighting situation, a slight underexposure helps to add strong contrasts and more vivid colors to your photo.
Generally speaking, the angle you choose to take your photo from determines the relative position of your main light source.
If you shoot directly against the light (e. g. if the sun is visible in your picture), the resulting extreme contrasts will likely tend to divide your image into very bright areas of light falling in directly and extremely dark areas that represent the mostly unlit sides of the objects on your photo. This can be impressive, but does not allow you to capture many details and colors.
If you shoot partly against the light, you can profit from the resulting reflections and highlights that add more contrasts and interesting light effects to your photo without destroying all the details and colors -- think of the reflection of the sun on the water during a sunset. This type of reflection is only possible if you are shooting against the light -- in this case, even directly against the main source of light (the sun). But since the light of the sun is usually much brighter than it is during a sunset, I recommend shooting partly against the light rather than doing it directly.
While shooting against the light usually causes extreme contrasts, having the main light source in your back tends to do the opposite: It makes all shadows vanish and therefore reduces the visible contrasts to a minimum. A similar effect, combined with a bad light quality, is produced by the use of a flash. Since flashes are usually built-in and therefore illuminate all areas visible in the photo frontally (and brutally), photos that are taken using flash usually lack the true 'wow effect' which is mostly produced by special lighting.
Focusing on contrasts, there is one more thing to pay attention to. Especially if your scenery covers a lot of physical depth, you can choose an angle that makes your main objects appear in front of a background of a particularly different color or brightness -- in most cases I would recommend to choose a background that is less expressive and has less 'identity' than the object(s) you want the viewer to focus on. In order to create an impression of clarity and simplicity, I recommend to choose a bright, even background. If your object itself is bright, it will stand out better from a darker background and create an impression of purity in contrast to the mysterious background.
While contrasts mostly make photos appear more vivid and deep, hard shadows produced by too strong direct light can be a harm to an otherwise balanced picture. The most simple solution to this problem has been used in the film industry from the early years to this day: Direct light can easily be diffused by any kind of semi-transparent material. I found that even the shadows of trees (unless their foliage is too dense) can provide the perfect diffuse light for many purposes such as portraits.
Dealing with poor lighting, you have to be careful. Even if your camera allows you to choose a high sensitivity (e. g. ISO 400 and higher), this does not mean that it is really capable of taking decent photos at this setting. Most of the cheaper compact cameras produce a fairly high amount of grain when they are used at little light. Combining a low ISO value (the abbreviation refers to the International Organization for Standardization) with a high shutter speed will result in very dark photos on cloudy days -- shooting at twilight or indoors will be mostly impossible this way. For most situations you will have to choose either a high light sensitivity (which increases the grain in your pictures), or lower the shutter speed and put up with some blur. If your camera has an OIS feature (Optical Stabilization System), you should definitely make use of that. I found it to be very powerful!
(c) Dino Schachten 2010. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.
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