Capturing Lighting in Photography

In the following photographs my main goal was to observe and capture the lighting and atmosphere of the scene. The slightly orange light at dusk adds a nice colour contrast to the blue water as they are complementary colours. The glowing light effect of the main light source, the sun, creates a very soft transition of both value and colour in the sky. Pointing the camera towards the light source will result in very dark foregrounds though. These aspects taken into consideration, very dynamic and contrasty images can be created (e.g. see first image below).

One must also watch out for the lens flare that occurs when taking photos directly at the light source. If one wants to avoid said lens flare, as it is often too bright and destroys the balance of the picture, one can choose a position from which the desired scene can be captured without the light source being in the image view. This will also enable more detail for the image as the levels (darkest colour to lightest colour) are now closer together and the camera will capture these more accurately.

Below are some compositional variations between the dark foreground and soft background to create different effects. As a rule the less contrasty, the calmer and more harmonious the photograph will turn out.

The pictures were taken during some of the first proper spring days in Dundee this year and show how nice the "Dundee Promenade" is during good weather conditions (sadly a bit rare due to the typical rainy Scottish weather).

Capturing Dynamics in Soft Lighting

A montage of a seagull taking off to begin its flight

Central Message
Surround by steps leading up to the positive way of thinking.

The Tay Bridge

The two top left photographs have a high colour contrast (between the strong oranges and blues). The top right on the other hand has a strong value contrast, as does the image below.