See the light

Recently had read a book called "RICK SAMMON'S complete guide to DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY". This book guiding you how to have a nice photo with different part that you have to notice on it. First at all, after I read the book, I would like the share about the the importance of "seeing the light". According to Rick Sammon said, the first step is be aware of highlight and shadow areas in a scene.

In photography have a term called "value blind". It describe an image that has very little range between light or dark. A value blind viewer doesn't see the difference in the light value in the scene. Fortunetely, we can to learn how to "see the light".

When look for the light, actually photographer want the main subject to be in the highlight area. The reason is everytime our eye is usually drawn to the brightest part of the scene area. Thus, know how to see a light is important for a photo.

A scene's highlight and shadow areas, however, is not enough. There must observe the scene' contrast range (range between light and dark of a medium). If the contrast range is beyond the recordable contrast range of the image sensor, part of the scene will be overexposed or underexposed.

However, we can compress and reduce the scene's brightness range in five ways.
1. recompose the scene or reposition the subject to eliminate areas that are too dark or too light.
2. use a flash to fill in some of the shadows in scene.
3. use a graduated filter to darken the brighter portion of a scene.
4. use a reflector to bounce light onto the dark area of a subject
5. hold a light diffuser over a subject to soften shadows.