Lighting in nature photography
The quality and direction of light will dramatically affect your landscape photos. For this reason, it is essential to master the lighting as much as possible. Light quality refers to the hardness or softness of the light, where soft light creates limited shadows and saturated colors, while hard light adds high contrast and heavy shadows to the image. And the lighting direction is the direction in which the light hits your subject. For example, midday sunlight shines on the subject from above, evening sunlight shines on the subject from the side, etc.
In general, the quality of light is more important here. Because although you can try different directions of light to get beautiful results, if you can’t understand the quality of the light, you will constantly take mediocre (or bad) photos.
Nature photographers love to shoot during the “golden hour,” the hours after sunrise and before sunset, when the sun is low in the sky and casts a beautiful golden glow on the landscape. And this is true. Golden hours are the perfect time for nature photography. To practice and learn the principles of lighting in nature photography, it is better to photograph a subject in the same place before sunrise and after sunset. The differences in the light in these two situations should be analyzed and the color and intensity of the light and the details of the photos should be compared. In examining the lighting, the brightness of the photo must be taken into account, that is, a certain amount of light from the desired scene reaches the sensitive film. The amount of light depends on the brightness and darkness of the environment, the size of the aperture opening, the shutter speed or the shutter speed. The best source of light is the sun, and if artificial light is used, a concentrated light lamp. This light prevents light from entering the lens. Determining the way and position of lighting in relation to the subject is very important, and the first step to take a beautiful, creative and artistic photo is to determine this position and how to light the subject. In addition to the things mentioned about the position of light, the intensity of light is also significant in photography, which includes strong light, i.e. sunlight that shines without clouds and fog in a clear sky, and spotlights also produce strong light. When the cloud blocks the sun, soft light is created and the rays of light shine on the subject from all sides, and if the light shines on a transparent surface like the surface of water, a sharp light or flash appears.
With these explanations, it is clear that knowing the light, the principles and methods of lighting is important for every photographer in every trend and view of aestheticians, so that photographers can produce creative and beautiful photos in the path of growth and development that will attract the visual interest of the audience. Expand marketing and also remain in the art of photography.