How to use light and shadow in shooting

Lead: Photography is an art about light and shadow. Light and shadow is light and shadow. Every change of light can cause different works, and the existence of shadows adds more interest to the picture. We often worry about the shadows in photography, and we often try our best to solve the long-standing problem of insufficient light. But from another perspective, shadows can actually help photographers tell stories and enhance the emotional and visual impact of photos.

How to use light and shadow in shooting

How to use shadows and contrast between light and shade to create a dramatic picture? The key is to forget the shadow details. Don't regret losing dark details, because in fact you don't need them. The idea that all the details of HDR are clear does not apply here. You don't have to have everything.

Shadows are dark and mysterious, which can not only enhance the expressive force of the works, but also stimulate the imagination of the audience to the greatest extent. By paying attention to shadows, you can create works full of strong contrast. Minimalist design is very popular now, and paying attention to shadows can make your work very simple in some cases. You need to take advantage of the dynamic range of the sensor: expose the highlights and keep the shadows unchanged. If the light is strong enough, the shadow will become dark enough and contain only some details.

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Strong light can create vivid pictures.

For example, in this photo taken in the Ming Tombs, the red palace wall is the shadow of branches and eaves. We can't see the trees and eaves directly in the picture, but through the shadows, you can associate the details of the trees and eaves, such as the shape of the trees. This makes the shooting work rise to a new realm: freehand brushwork. It not only reproduces the real scene, but also shows the scene.

The sun sinks behind photographers and trees, casting a poetic shadow, and the shadow also becomes the protagonist in the photo. When you deliberately use shadows when shooting, the picture will show a simple and regular style, but there is a profound charm behind it. In most cases, you should choose RAW format to shoot, because it is more conducive to post-modification, and you can post-process some dark details.

When you see such an eye-catching image: a shadow with strong contrast, you may instinctively turn it into black and white at once. Because scenes with high contrast look more suitable for black and white. To some extent, removing color emphasizes the depth of shadow and makes the work more special. You can use Lightroom to increase the contrast or adjust the transparency to make the contrast between light and dark stronger. The above is the effect of converting the above picture into black and white. The wooden window looks more textured and the shadows become illusory. Of course, black and white effect is one of the ways to express shadows, and everyone has different aesthetic choices.

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Large-scale shadows can be applied not only to landscape works but also to portrait works. Applied portrait works? Do you particularly want to ask what kind of picture it will be? Take the above picture as an example, the main body of the character is placed in the vacancy of the shadow. In the original picture, there is only one model dressed in the style of the Republic of China, and the shadow projected on the wall enriches the content of the work. This is a small and fresh content, and the mottled light and shadow seem to tell a past event. The application of shadow and portrait works undoubtedly provides a new idea for you to shoot portraits in the future: in addition to sexy and sultry private houses, it is also a good choice to write a small poem about time with shadows.

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Look for scenes with strong contrast between light and dark in nature.

Take the following figure as an example. This photo was taken indoors. The light from the window lit up the plums. The window is very small, so most of the room is still dark, which is why the details of the dark part are almost lost. What is a scene with strong contrast between light and dark? This is a scene with high contrast: the local bright area with sufficient light is brighter than the rest.

This shooting technique is similar to sketch in art, we can see that the subject is more prominent in the picture, the shadow makes the picture three-dimensional, and with bright colors, the work becomes as harmonious as oil painting. Still life photography often needs scenes with strong contrast between light and dark to make the subject more stereoscopic.

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The picture is dominated by cats and flowers, which may be monotonous or slightly monotonous. But by adding shadows, the photos are more story-telling. Good composition makes people shine.

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Silhouette shooting

Silhouette should be the most widely used place for large-area shadows in daily shooting. I believe everyone is familiar with silhouette shooting, and many photographers will take silhouette photos under the backlight. The key is to highlight the subject by expressing the shape and posture of the object and the outline of the object. The subject in the photo often has only a black outline and does not contain any details. The object of silhouette photography can be people, objects or scenes. A simple silhouette can always attract the audience's attention quickly through the beauty of form or color.

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How should I shoot the shadow?

If you set the camera to automatic mode (even aperture or shutter priority mode) and try to shoot shadows, the result may be too bright. Because, after all, this is the function of the camera: make enough exposure to get brightness details. However, this is not always what we want. The use of shadows is a typical example. You need to manually change the shooting parameters of your camera to ensure that the shadow is still in the dark. There are several ways to help you do this:

1. Set your camera to manual mode. This is the preferred mode for experienced photographers. In manual mode, you need to set the aperture, shutter speed and ISO value yourself. If you are not sure what kind of aperture shutter to use, you can copy the value to the automatic mode, refer to the matching parameters given by the automatic mode, and then adjust it according to your own needs.

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2. Use exposure compensation. If Shoot later finds that the work presented on the LCD screen is too bright, he can simply adjust the exposure compensation of the camera to keep the shadow dark. Almost every camera, even card machines and camera phones will have this setting. With this setting, you can easily increase or decrease the exposure step by step, brightening or darkening the picture until you feel right. If you use screen framing in shooting, you can directly render the display. In most cases, the shadow will become too bright, and you just need to lower the exposure compensation slightly.

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3. Lock your exposure. If you have a digital SLR camera, it will have an exposure lock function. With exposure locking, you can first fill your work with scenes that do not contain shadows or other bright areas, and let your camera automatically calculate the exposure. Then you press AE-L to lock them. This will freeze the exposure settings so that you can repaint. At this point, the image contains shadows again, but the camera will not recalculate the exposure and will not increase the exposure because of the shadows. In this way, you will get perfect exposure, bright details will be fully expressed, and the dark parts will be shaded. Alternatively, you can simply write down a few parameters and switch to manual mode, completely bypassing the exposure locking step.

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4. Surround the exposure. Peripheral exposure is to take a series of photos with the same content in different exposure value. Some mid-to high-end cameras have this function built in, and there is a special BKT button or this setting in the menu. If yes, you can consider how many photos to take and the interval between exposures. The simplest is three exposures. For example, the first one was taken with normal exposure, the second one was underexposed and the third one was overexposed. Or through several different exposure compensation shots. If the camera doesn't have this feature built in, you can also merge photos later.

Nowadays, HDR tends to be abused, but perhaps the HDR effect is not suitable for all shooting scenes, and we need to abandon the idea that we must capture a lot of dark details. There is no need to think that there is a technical defect if the dark details cannot be fully captured at the same time. We all know that this is not the case. Camera sensors cannot capture all the brightness that our eyes can see. Let's use the interaction of light and shadow to create interesting dynamic composition, create some mysterious gaps for the audience, and let their imagination fill the connotation of the work. Photography should be the result of chemical action of light and shadow.