Photography is All About Light

The word photography comes from photos for light and graph meaning to draw or write. So if you want be a successful photographer, you need to learn about light. There are many types of light and this blog post concerns HARD LIGHT and SOFT LIGHT

An example of hard light is bright sunshine which is direct and creates harsh shadows. Another example is an on-camera flash unit. Hard light can create an image with washed out details.

Soft light is indirect or diffused and an example of this is a cloudy bright day. The cloud layer evens out the sunlight and acts as a huge diffuser. This is the pleasing quality of light create great portraits. Studio photographers spend lots of money buying all sorts of equipment in an effort to put soft light on their models.

When it comes to light sometime you have to take what you get. But you can learn to manipulate light. There are several ways to soften light.

Bouncing light off a white ceiling causes the light to reflect and soften. There is a reason the ceilings in most homes and offices are white is that this helps brightens the room.

The Dutch Master painters of the1600s such as Rembrandt and Vermeer appreciated the quality of soft light. What was their preferred light source? These painters loved a window that faced the North, because the light that enters a Northern exposure is indirect and diffused. Take a look at the portraits painted by Rembrandt and you will see fine examples soft lighting.

An easy way to bounce light is to use the ceiling or a wall. Just make sure the surface is a light color. I have also done a lot using a white piece of poster board which cost about a dollar. Photo equipment manufacturers such as Photoflex and Lastolite sell folding reflector disks that can he used to alter light. I have one with white, silver and gold surfaces. The gold adds a bit of a warm tone.

Another way to obtain soft light is to place a sheer cloth between the light source and the subject. Draperies, curtains and tents can provide a useful diffusion of hard light. Photoflex and other companies sell translucent disks for softening harsh light.

Another great item especially when it comes to product photography is a light tent. Light tents help you get soft even light on the subject while also reducing reflections. There are all shapes and sizes and most are collapsible. Cloud Dome offers a kit that includes fluorescent lights and a background. The whole thing folds flat so it can be taken on location.

As a photographer in search of soft light you can wait for a cloudy day or use Northern exposure of employ some equipment to modify the light to your demands.

Even Great Photographers Had to Start Somewhere

Edward Steichen, one of the great pioneer photographers, had a less than amazing experience when he first started taking photos.

This great photographic artist was one of the talented people of the early 1900s who helped change the attitudes toward photography which was viewed as a novelty or a fad whereas painting was considered high art.

Photography eventually found a home in the world of art and Steichen won many awards but back in 1895 when he obtained his first camera he was not an instant success.

In the book, A life in Photography, Steichen recounts how he got started in photography as a teenager living in Milwaukee. As I began reading, I expected to learn how even from day one he produced great art as his natural talent flowed out. Wrong. Steichen said the first camera he purchased was a Kodak that took a roll of 50 exposures. The result of his first roll was 49 misses and one hit. Yikes.

But he kept trying and later he upgraded to a camera that used 4x5 glass plates. In the book he told how he took a photo of a skyscraper in Milwaukee and then in his home darkroom started to develop the plate. As the young photographer submerged the glass plate in the tray of chemicals and rocked the solution back and forth the image appeared causing him to feel great satisfaction. He celebrated with a loud whoop of joy which frightened his mother because she was worried about all those poisonous chemicals he was using. But he assured her that what she heard was a shout joy not distress.

But as the developing process continued Steichen’s joy faded because the photo kept turning darker and darker. Being a novice Steichen had figured the exposure wrong and set the camera to allow too much light onto the plate. Eventually, the image on his plate was so dark that nothing was recognizable. Finally, as he completed the process and took his image upstairs to rinse it in the sink. He was determined to get a print and after an all day exposure was able to get enough light to pass through his overexposed plate to make a decent print of the Milwaukee skyscraper.

As the months and years passed Steichen began exhibiting his work and building a reputation as a professional photographer. He forged bonds with the Museum of Modern Art where his photos and those of other photographers were displayed for the public. In my opinion the pinnacle of his artistic expressions was the “Family of Man” exhibition of 1955.

This amazing exhibit of photos from 68 nations taken by great and unknown photographers showed people living, eating, dancing, playing, fighting, laughing, giving birth and dying. A book by the same name became an international best seller.

So even if his first roll of film was only two percent successful, Steichen went to become a great pioneering photographer praised by artists, writers and the general public.

Japanese 35 mm cameras of the 1970s

When I was in high school I got interested in photography. I wanted to own a nice camera so I started to save my money to buy one. While looking at camera magazines I read the articles about the great cameras and lenses. The front of the magazines featured full page adds by manufacturers such as Canon, Nikon, Konica, Mamiya, Minolta, Miranda, Olympus, Pentax, Topcon and Yashika. Most of the cameras were made in Japan.
Flipping to the back of the magazine, a reader could find pages and pages of advertisements from camera stores. The type in the ads was very tiny and hard to read. Each ad listed dozens and dozens of cameras and accessories. Most of the camera stores were located in New York and did a lot of mail order business to customers far and wide.
I did not want to take a chance on a log distance transaction so I just looked at the ads and dreamed. There were two camera stores about 30 miles from my home and sometimes I would go inside and look at the cameras and pick up some of the glossy brochures about photo equipment.
When I started getting almost enough money to buy a camera I went to one of the stores and asked the clerk if I could see some cameras. The only camera I could afford was an East German Praktika but it did not impress me, so I decided to wait. About a month later I had enough money to buy a Canon TX, an entry level camera with no fancy features. It was a sold camera made of metal and glass. Since I had withdrawn nearly all the money from my savings account I could not afford extras like lenses, filters or strobe lights. But I had a 35 mm camera and film so I was on my way.

Camera Shopping? Compare the Features

Coke vs Pepsi

Ford vs Chevy

Nikon vs Canon

What is your preference? I have no advice for comparing soft drinks or cars but when itcomes to cameras I can help.

There is now a website http://snapsort.com that is set up to pit one camera against another

and provide a detailed report with one camera declared THE WINNER! A few years ago,

a person shopping for a camera would usually walk into a camera shop and tell a clerk youwant to see some cameras. Or another alternate was to flip through magazines and booksreading reviews and descriptions of various camera models. Now you can save the tripto the camera store, bookstore or library.

I spent some time on the site entering models and noting the results which are broken down to important differences and important similarities. The winner and loser also have the pros and cons of the camera listed. I think that is good because perhaps you really need a feature

such as built-in flash or very rapid continuous shooting and the snapsort team has chosen a camera as a winner but the loser camera has a unique feature you need. Then you can make your own conclusion. Another nice feature of this website is the Popular Comparisons section below each camera which helps you see other cameras which are similar to the cameras in your search.

So with this information a person in the market for a new camera can spend a bit of time at this very useful website and learn plenty about all sorts of cameras before making a big

decision about a camera purchase. By the way, I prefer Pepsi and Chevy.

Keep Your Eyes on the Horizon

The horizon appears in many photos and where you place the horizon in your shot can make a difference. If you want to emphasize the sky, use a low horizon. Or put the horizon high if you want to show the foregound. The most important thing is to be creative and shoot the scene all different ways. A great thing about digital photography is that a person can shoot like crazy and later delete the bad ones.

Usually, it is not recommended to place the horizon right in the middle. But like all rules of composition, there are times when breaking the rules works.

Another thing about horizons is that in general, you are better off keeping level. Especially in images with water ther is something a bit disturbing at a subconscience level about a lake that is tilted because the human brain knows that that the water in lakes and oceans don’t slope upwards. Many photographers make this mistake, but with Photoshop it is very easy to use the cropping tool to level the horizon. However, sometimes you may want to experiment with tilting your camera at different kinds of angles to produce a creative shot.

Quotes Concerning Photography

Many brilliant people have commented about photography and here are some that I have collected over the years.

“Photography is a major force in explaining man to man.” Edward Steichen

“We see, hear, smell, and taste many things without noticing them at the time.” Carl Jung

“Photography has not changed since its origin except in its technical aspects, which for me, are not a major concern.” Henri Cartier-Bresson

“Look for what you don't see.” Rashid Elisha

“Creativity is a radical necessity, not a luxury.” Jean Houston

“Learn to see, and then you'll know that there is no end to the new worlds of our vision.” Carlos Castaneda

“A photograph is always seen in some context; physical, remembered, imagined.” Rashid Elisha

“To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event.” Henri Cartier-Bresson

“The hardest thing to see is what is in front of our eyes.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.” Isaac Asimov

“Composition is the strongest way of seeing.” Edward Weston

“Recording images serenity and beauty was a matter of devout observance.” Gordon Parks

"The so-called rules of composition are, in my mind, invalid, irrelevant and immaterial.” Ansel Adams

“I want my sitters to be noticed, not my work.” Lord Snowden

“The eyes are the windows to the soul.” Karsh of Ottawa

“Look at any landscape photograph. You see the shape of things, the mountains and trees and buildings, but not the sky.” Kurt Koffka

“If I could tell the story in words, I would not have to lug around a camera.” Lewis Hiene

“The soul never thinks without an image.” Aristotle

“The best digital cameras have 6 to 16 million pixels. Our retina, consisting of rods and cones, has over 100 million sensors.” Dr. Richard D. Zakia

“Photography does not create eternity, as art does; it embalms time, rescuing it simply from its proper corruption.” André Bazin

“Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask "how," while others of a more curious nature will ask "why." Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information.” Man Ray

“Photography knows how to authenticate its misrepresentations.' Mason Cooley

“It's a funny thing about life. If you refuse to accept anything but the best, you often get it.” Somerset Maugham

“The negative is the equivalent of the composer's score, and the print the performance.” Ansel Adams

“I don't care if you make a print on a bath mat, just as long as it is a good print.” Edward Weston

“One photo out of focus is a mistake, ten photo out of focus are an experimentation, one hundred photo out of focus are a style.” Anonymous

“We can try to avoid making choices by doing nothing, but even that is a decision.” Gary Collins

“Photography is like art because, like painting, it seeks beauty.” Julia Margaret Cameron.

“Balance is the enemy of art.” Richard Eyre

“Much of modern art is devoted to lowering the threshold of what is terrible. By getting us used to what formerly, we could not bear to see or hear, because it was too shocking, painful, or embarrassing, art changes morals.” Susan Sontag

“Practice is everything.” Periander (Often misquoted as "Practice makes perfect.”)

“Perception is personal. We see what we see.” Richard Fahey

“There is no audience as far as I am concerned. I am the audience.” Joel Meyerowitz

“You know ... that a blank wall is an appalling thing to look at. The wall of a museum - a canvas - a piece of film -- or a guy sitting in front of a typewriter. Then, you start out to do something - that vague thing called creation. The beginning strikes awe within you.” Edward Steichen

“Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or doing it better.” John Updike

“If you just take a picture of what's there, it destroys the mystery, the magic.” Art Kane

“One's mind has a way of making itself up in the background, and it suddenly becomes clear what one means to do.” A. C. Benso

“It is imagination that gives shape to the universe.” Barry Lopez

“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.” Dorothea Lange

“With all art expression, when something is seen, it is a vivid experience, sudden, compelling and inevitable.” Ansel Adams

“To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event.” Henri Cartier-Bresson

“I am not interested in nature; I'm interested in my own nature.” Arnold Sisken

“If photography is allowed to stand in for art in some of its functions it will soon supplant or corrupt it completely thanks to the natural support it will find in the stupidity of the multitude.” Charles Baudelaire

“Vertical columns, such as those found in Greek and Roman temples, look parallel from the ground because they are wider at the top than at the bottom.” Joanne Kemp

“Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.” Henry Ward Beecher

“Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training.” Anna Freud

“To see an object in space means to see it in context.” Rudolf Arnheim

Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second. Jean-Luc Godard

“The more one looks, the more one sees. And the more one sees, the better one knows where to look.” Anonymous

“Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited and the wealth and confusion man has created.” Edward Steichen

“God is in the details” Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

“I don't know what you could say about a day in which you have seen four beautiful sunsets.” John Glenn

“Between the photographer and the subject there has to be a distance. The camera may intrude, trespass, distort, exploit.” Susan Sontag


“The magic of photography is metaphysical. What you see in the photograph isn't what you saw at the time. The real skill of photography is organized visual lying.” Terence Donovan

“A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.” Diane Arbus

Warren Kimble is a success at licensing his art

Warren Kimble is not a photographer but I admire his business sense. Kimble is a painter and proof that some artists can become rich before they die. When I look at his art I also see proof that the art does not have to be beautiful to sell.

Years ago Kimble was an antiques dealer in small-town Vermont and then he veered into painting in the primitive style. This style does nothing for me. I find it repulsive, childish and ugly. But, hey this is what millions of people have paid good money to own so what does my opinion mean? He is rich and I am struggling to feed my kids and buy them new shoes.

Here is what happened. Kimble was painting works one at a time and selling them one at a time just like most other painters. But then he made a change that meant big rewards. He learned to multiply his earnings by licensing his work to be mass produced not only as wall art but also to be printed on towels, potholders, aprons, tablecloths, rugs, plates and etc. He paints primitive versions of barns, cows, chickens and such. People love his work.

I entered Warren Kimble’s name in a google search and got 109,000 hits. A search for Warren Kimble items on Ebay came back with 369 items including cookie jars, plates, mugs, lamps and more. So he is popular and earning a comfortable living. I wish him well and hope to someday gain some achievements of my own.