3 Tips For The Best Lighting For Photos
If you have grand dreams of great photos that you can take while on vacation, traveling the world, or even just in your daily life, there’s one thing that you’re going to need to get right in order to accomplish this: lighting.
Without great lighting, even the best laid plans for amazing photos won’t look great. But once you understand how lighting should work in a photo, you can make every photo you take a great one.
To help you learn how this can be done, here are three tips for the best lighting for photos.
Use Natural Light When You Can
To get amazing photos, the best thing to do is to try to use natural light as much as you can.
With natural light, meaning light from the sun, your subject of the photo will look its best. There will be fewer harsh shadows, more warmth to the photo, and better contrast in colors. And luckily, you don’t even have to be outside to take advantage of natural light for your photos. If you are taking photos indoors, you should try to take the photos near a window so that you can get some of the natural light playing in the shot. Even turning off the indoor lighting can help to make interior natural lighting more interesting in your photos.
Reflect Light Back Onto Your Subject
Sometimes, even with natural lighting, you can’t really get the subject of your photos to be lit the way that you really need. In this situation, you’ll want to know how to work with the lighting that you have and how you can reflect it to be exactly where you need it to be.
If you are going to work to diffuse the light or reflect the light back onto your subject, you can use something as simple as a piece of paper to help soften and redirect the light where you want it to be. While you might have to play with it for a bit, with the right angles, you can reflect light just where you want it to be for the best lit photos either inside or outside.
Play With 3-Point Lighting
For photo situations where you need to use more artificial light to help make your photos look their best, you may want to use the 3-point lighting technique to help you keep your subject well lit and not looking flat.
To use the 3-point lighting technique, you’ll want to put the strongest light to the side of the camera and two softer lights both behind the subject and coming from the other side of the camera. By doing this, you can have even and properly diffused lighting for your photos.
If you want to have your photos look great, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you get the best lighting.