...no image shall escape my sight. That is how I feel about photography. Like a superhero. We photographers use light to make our images, that is the basic principle of photography. But how you manipulate that light is the actual "superpower". It doesn't matter what kind of lighting you have, if it day or if it is night, fully bright or pitch black, you can always take the images you want. Some photographers work with natural light only, others with controlled "studio" lighting, others mix and match both. Maybe an off camera flash used as fill light to better expose the sky in the background. Maybe gel the light with different colors to make the images more dramatic. Use a reflector, or a softbox, or a diffuser, or all the nifty gadgets that are out there. Or even having a low shutter speed or using the camera in "Bulb" mode. But at the end of the day what we did was control light.
Photography is all about light, the same image in two different light scenarios will express and convey different emotions. For example:
Almost identical images with different lighting situations. The one on the left is kind of more "moody" and...well, dark (pun not intended). And the one on the right is more "lively", still moody but not as much as the one on the left. By the way that is me rocking my Gears of War COG tags
That is the magic of knowing how to light a subject. The light you use depends on the final "emotion" or "feeling" you want to convey in the person that is looking at your image. There are a lot of techniques out there. And a self respecting photographer should at least know how to light a subject, even on natural lighting. Just because the sun is out doesn't mean that you can't use a flash, or a reflector, or a diffuser. All these tools are here for a reason, and the more you practice with them the more you get to see the light before it is even there. Here is another example:
It was a particularly sunny day, and this image was taken around noon. But the location, which was a bench under a tree that was surrounded by flower bushes, was casting shadows all over the place. This was because the light was coming from the sun, trough the tree leaves, and then on the subject. So basically the lighting looked like camouflage on top of the skin. So how did we finish with this image? Well we used two reflectors on each side at 45 degree angles, the one on the left was exactly on top of the subject that way we made our own shade. And then we added an off camera flash to have the light streak you see on the top left corner. The image turned out exactly as I envisioned it in my mind.
Now take this two self portraits for example:
We can stop motion with a flash. Once you know what you want you'll start knowing how to set the lights, and how each light is going to light the scene. In this images I only had a flash right behind me, because I knew that once that flash fired the water in my hand would be like a giant mirror reflecting that light all around. The hardest part of this shot was keeping my eyes open.
Stuff like this makes photography fun and spontaneous, but at the same time controllable, because you don't have to feel that you missed an opportunity because the lighting changed (or will change). Instead if you control your light you have better results and less time "fiddling" (is that even a word?) with the settings on the back of the camera and concentrating more on the client. So my advice is: "Be a superhero and control your light. Your clients will love you even more"
