What are the basic knowledge of photography?

The basic knowledge of photography is:

1. The wider the light source, the softer the light. Conversely, the narrower the light source, the harder the light.

A wide range of light sources can weaken shadows, reduce contrast and suppress textures, while a narrow light source has the opposite effect. This is because the wider the light source, the more directions the light shines on the object, which will increase the lighting in the scene and reduce the shadows.

The closer the light source is, the softer the light is.

Conversely, the farther the light source is, the harder the light is. This is because the closer the light source is to the subject, the bigger it is, and the wider it is; The farther the light source is from the subject, the smaller it is, that is, the narrower it is.

Take the sun as an example. The diameter of the sun is 109 times that of the earth. It's a fairly wide light source! However, the sun is 93 million miles away from the earth (about10.5 billion kilometers), which only accounts for a very small part of the earth's sky, so the light is very hard when the sun shines directly on objects.

3. Diffuse reflection can disperse light, making the light source wider and the light softer.

The essence of using diffuse scattering to disperse light is to broaden the light source, so as to achieve the purpose of softening light. When clouds block sunlight, the shadow on the object will be obviously reduced, and if there is fog, the shadow will disappear. Clouds, gloomy skies and fog will diffuse light, and diffusion will spread light in all directions. On cloudy and foggy days, the whole sky will become a very broad light source and a natural soft box.

4. Reflect diffused light.

Shooting a narrow beam on a large frosted surface (such as a wall, roof or frosted reflector) will spread to a wider area when reflected. But if you use a smooth reflector, the light will still be narrow after being reflected. A mirror is an extremely smooth reflector. The light it reflects is almost as narrow as the incident light.

5. The farther the light source is, the faster the light decays and the darker the subject is.

This law points out that the illumination of an object is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. It sounds complicated, but it's actually very simple. For example, if you increase the distance from the light source to the subject by 1 time, the light falling on the subject is only a quarter of that before increasing the distance. In other words, the light will decay rapidly with the distance from the light source. We should remember this rule. If you want to move the light source or the subject, you must change the quality of the light.

6. Light attenuation can be used to change the relationship between the subject and the background.

If the light is close to the subject, the illumination between the subject and the background will be more obvious; If the light is far away from the subject, the background will light up accordingly. This principle also applies to side light: when the side light source is close to the subject, the light attenuation of the whole picture will be more obvious than when the light source is far away from the subject.