Look for the Light

It's easy for budding photographers to get obsessed with equipment. After all, photography is an equipment intensive pursuit and we all love to geek out about f-stop this and low noise that. Because of this obsession with equipment, it's easy to think that better equipment will automatically make our photographs better. However, the secret that gets glossed over in discussions about equipment is that photographs start with light. If you're not happy with your photographs, the quickest way to improve them is to use your light better.

I was talking about this a few weeks back in Denver with Bill Dudney, one of the instructors at the Pragmatic Studio. We were hanging out before a class started one morning and to help illustrate my point, I pulled out my iPhone and made two quick exposures. The first was just an off the cuff snapshot made without regard to the light, background, or the fact that my friend (and Pragmatic Studio co-owner) Mike Clark was in the background. In other words, it was the kind of "oh, let me take a shot of someone really quickly" frame that we've all made so many times (and I show it here with great apologies to both Bill and Mike, sorry guys!).

The second shot was made about 5 or 10 seconds after the first. The difference is that I rotated around the room about 90 degrees or so in order to take advantage of the light coming in through the window and from the overhead fixtures. Nothing more. Same crappy iPhone camera. No control over anything. But, as you can see, the image is immediately a bit better.

Obviously, I could make an even better image if I had pulled out the D700 that was in my bag and then cajoled Bill into giving me a good smile while making sure that the background was better used and maybe even start thinking about reflec... But that's not the point here. The point is that light is your raw material. Upgrade the way you use it and you can make better pictures with any camera.

Give it a try yourself. Pull out your iPhone or other camera phone and play a bit. Even if you don't take a snap, observe the way your image looks on screen as you move about in relation to your subject and light. It's a pretty instructive way to spend a few minutes.