Key Lighting Tips to Take Better Photographs

Written by bmlengel on May 24th, 2009

In this age of digital cameras, you have probably thought that you can just point and shoot and out will appear a great shot.Hold on, don’t go so fast. The truth is you can have the top of the line digital camera, but if you don’t know what you are doing, you will take lousy shots.

Well, I’d love to share with you some great advice in photography to help improve your skills. These tips are coming from years of experience as a San Diego wedding photographer.These tips are about using lighting and they will be some of the best advice and keys to your success in taking great photos.

First great tip in regards to lighting.Now if the shots you will take are going to be outdoors during the day, the natural sunlight will be some of the best lighting possible. Now you are probably thinking, “that’s easy, when you are a San Diego photographer since it is always shiny there”, when in actuality really bright sunlight can cast harsh shadows. Or it can wash out the details in faces if the sun is overhead.

Overall, what you will want to do is to have the sun behind you when you take most of the shots.This stops any harsh shadows in your photo caused by the sun.There will be some times when you want to take shots from different angles when you do try to get some shadows into the shots.

Now that we have addressed the shots during the day, what about those night shots?

The key to taking photos at night is turning off your flash.Of course if it is absolutely dark with no light you wil need it, but for times when there is some lighting, use the lighting around you, but make sure the shutter speeds are slow enough to let light in.Also, stay steady when you are taking your photograph or you will cause the picture to blur. Doing these couple of tricks can make a dramatic difference when taking night shots.

The third and final tip with using lighting to capture great photos is the golden hour.There is this time that photographers like to call the golden hour or magic hour, and that is sunrise and sunset.

These times of day you wll be able to capture great shots because you will get the more warmer and inviting colors.You’ll be able to get that golden lighting that isn’t available during any other time of day.

There you go. Probably the biggest key in taking greatshots is to make sure you take advantage of the natural lighting. Knowing what techniques to use for different parts of the day, or just scheduling a photo shoots to capture those times of day will help you become an excellent photographer.