Light, Camera, Action!

This week I took a portion of my MOOC called "Using Light in Your Photography". It was the first instructional portion of the course, and was two short videos that explained how light can be utilized and manipulated to create better photos. There was a fair amount of new vocabulary, including histogram, aperture, hard light, soft light, transmitted light, and reflected light. The instructor of the course, Karl, explains that "understanding light is probably the most important aspect of good photography." Here are some of the things I learned:

The four main types of light:

1. Hard light- comes from an apparently small source. Ex: Sun. Has a high contrast and gives sharp-edged shadows.
2. Soft light- light source that has a large surface area. Ex: Overcast day. Has a low contrast and gives little shadow.
3. Transmitted light- light you can see in the photo from the source. Ex: A photo of a light bulb or a candle.
4. Reflected light- light that is reflected off an object onto the subject. Ex: The sun reflecting off of the water.

"The Magic Hour" is a time of the day which photographers love. It is the half hour before and the half hour after sunset. During this time there is a good combination of soft light (the sky) and hard light (the sun itself). I wanted to experiment with this time of day, and was lucky enough to see a beautiful sunset in action. So I brought my camera out and snapped a couple of shots from my backyard. Here is my favourite example.

This week, I also started to follow a Twitter feed (@digitalps) that will give me more digital photography tips. There is still a lot I have to learn about digital photography! But I think I'm headed in the right direction.