"Basic Photography with Bake along #4"

Sun rays falling Over Kedarnath Valley 

Have you ever imagined what our life would be without Sun? Our world would be a dark place as sun is the only natural source of light available for us. Light make our world alive and all the colours can only be appreciated in its presence. I hope now you can understand the importance of light in photography also. A good photograph is nothing but that perfect light which falls on your object and your camera captured that with optimum setting. A camera basically captures the reflected light from the object. The quality and quantity of light guides the quality of photo. For example, in the evening before u switched on the light of your house, everything is unclear, hazy and dark but once you switched on the bulbs everything become lively and colourful. So light is very important in our life and in photography too.

I’m sure this must have happened with all of you at some point that when you brought a particular Saree or dress material from a shop, it would have looked so vivacious in the shop; but after coming back to home you must have noticed that the same material looks a bit dull. Can you tell me what had happened to that dress material in transition from the shop to home? Ok, I know you know that, in Saree shop, the shopkeeper lit every single bulb of its shop. So that the Sarees he shows to you look more beautiful and vibrant in colour. Hard and direct light made that material shimmers and look appealing to your eyes. Result! You happily wanted to buy every single thing from that shop. Typical business technique! But then it taught an important lesson to us that to make a thing more eye-catching proper lighting is indispensable.

So in today’s article I’m going to tell you about light. Light can be of many types.

1. Natural light in photography

· Soft light in photography

· Hard light in photography

2. Artificial light in photography

Natural light

Suppose you lit a yellow bulb in the room, all the things with hint of yellow become clearer but the other colours become dull. Same will happen if you lit some other coloured bulb. Few colours will become vibrant but other (may be black or green) will become more dark and deep.

With yellow tint 

If you want a photograph to capture original colours of any object and with optimum colour tone, you have to put a neutral coloured bulb in the room. As the natural light from sun contains all colours, it gives neutral tone to the picture and true colours of object. But natural light source is not constant; it changes by the hour and with seasons. It also differs with your location and weather. I’m a natural light photographer and most of my photos are clicked in day time. Another drawback is that natural light is not available in night and depending on your locality it may not be adequate in certain hours of the day too. So, I will not be wrong if I assume that most of our food photographs will be captured in artificial light and this discussion is all about that only :)

Hard light 

Hard Light

Hard light is stronger and brighter light and it creates not only sharp highlights in the background but can also give glossy effects. Hard light can produce deeper shadows too and at times it hides finer details from the photograph. Above egg picture is the perfect example for that.

View of Nanda Devi Peak from Auli, Uttarakhand

I can cite an example here from my experience in the Himalayas. The famous Nanda Devi peak was in vicinity and a glimpse was available after a 15 minute drive from my home. This peak is always covered in snow and thus during hard light i.e. bright day light when sun was just above it, it could not be seen at all! Due to the glare one cannot even think that while he/she is gazing at a clear sky in distant horizon, a beautiful peak will emerge at the same spot once the light soothes a bit :) So the point is that a hard light condition is not favourable for photography and we will convert it to soft light using a diffuser and sometimes reflector as described later. 

Soft light

                     

Hard Light +Diffuser = Soft Light

                            
Soft light appears gentle and smooth and gives a feathery effect to a photo. It illuminates the area evenly and allows every detail to be captured in the photograph.

For getting soft light, you have to diffuse the hard light by using a diffuser. When you diffuse the hard light it becomes soft and the area is evenly lighted. For diffusing the light you will need a diffuser but for that you don’t need to buy those expensive diffusers. All you can do is put a white bed sheet just to cover the light source. Like if your source of light is a window of a room. Just put a white bed sheet on the curtain rod. The material of bed sheet can be of cotton, satin or anything else. Once you diffuse the light you will see that the shadows are softened too and now using a reflector you can avoid these shadows too :) At times you may choose to keep the shadows to give dramatic effects to your photograph. For this you can try different combination of Camera and light source positions to make the object front lit or back lit. Interesting effects can be obtained by using different colours of diffuser fabric for different colours of your object :)

Yes that's my typical setup and my home made reflector :P

For reflector I’ve a DIY solution too ;) Take a card board and aluminium foil, cover the board with aluminium foil with the help of cello tape. Your reflector is ready for the use. Otherwise, I’m sure all of you must have the silver and golden cake boards. Ta da! They will serve the purpose of the reflector. How? I will tell you.

Suppose the light is coming from left side of your object. The shadow will be forming on the right side which may be hiding some details of the object, to avoid this shadow you should place the reflector on the right side just like i did in the above picture and adjust it so that the required area gets reflected light. This is shown in the below picture.

Hard light + Diffuser + Reflector = Perfect Picture :)

Artificial light

In food photography most of the time photos are clicked indoors. There are instances where you have to click photographs in insufficient light or in night. That time you have to use the artificial light sources like bulbs or tube lights. The diffusers and reflectors will be handy in such cases to adjust the amount of light you required for your perfect photograph. 

 And at last I want to remind you about the skills you acquired in camera basic lessons regarding shutter speed and ISO. Both of these tools are used to control the effect of light for your photography. In a hard light or bright scenario we can use High shutter speed and similarly in dim scenarios we can use low shutter speed to control brightness and capture details. In a particularly dark scenario, lower shutter speed combined with high ISO setting can be used. Here, remember that higher ISO setting above a certain level can make the picture grainy. An advice here about camera flashes; though flash may be required and inevitable at times but it is a hard light source and it suppresses true colours of the object so we will rarely use flash and rather use the skills as described above to capture every detail in your picture perfect :)