Foundations of Photography: Night and Low Light

- As photographers, we spend a lot of time thinking about technical concerns like exposure theory or trying to find interesting subjects or locations. Or maybe wondering if a new piece of gear might inspire us or make our images more interesting. And these might all be worthwhile things to think about, but really, as photographers, there's one concern that should command our attention more than any other: Light. It's just that simple. If you don't have a good light, it doesn't matter what kind of gear you have, how much you know or what you're shooting.

With bad light, you'll be taking an inferior image. With good light, you can take otherwise mundane subject matter and create an interesting photo. Now, the problem is you can't always count on the light in a scene. Sometimes it'll be flat, sometimes it will be too harsh. but probably the most common lighting problem is simply not having enough of it. Low light makes exposure more difficult and often makes a photographer think that a scene is simply not suitable. Low-light situations can happen at any time of day. Step into it dimly lit room and suddenly you're facing potential exposure difficulties.

Therefore, to be effective in the greatest number of shooting situations, you need to have good skills for knowing how to handle the problems presented by low light. Light low light levels, though, are not always a problem. Sometimes they're an opportunity. The world looks very different when light levels dim and light sources change from sunlight to artificial light. Learning to recognize and exploit low-light situations can open up an entirely new world of subject matter. A scene that might have been blas? to you in the daytime might turn fascinating once the sun goes down.

If you've got good low-light skills you can take advantage of this different view of the same scene. In this course, we're going to take a look at all kinds of low-light shooting situations. From trying to get good results in a dimly lit room in your house to prowling around in the dark looking for photos that cannot exist with higher light levels. On rare occasions we'll be handling low-light by adding lighting of our own, but in most situations we'll be looking at working with available light levels, even when it appears that a scene is way too dark to get a good shot.

So grab your camera and maybe take a nap, cuz we're gonna be staying up late waiting for light levels to dim and exploring all of the different aspects and possibilities presented by the light and night shooting.