Learning to See the Light

There is no better way or topic to kick off the New Year than Mark’s post on “Learning to See the Light.”

Today’s Post by Mark Toal

I’ve read and heard that photography is all about the light. I understood that people meant, but that didn’t help. I always felt lucky when I captured an image where the lighting was great. A few years ago after 40 years of taking photos I finally started to get it and feel like I could see when the light was going to work for the image I was taking. Somebody once said that you need to take 10,000 photos to begin to see. For me I think it was more like 100,000.

I still have a lot to learn about light and especially how to create lighting but now I feel like I can see what makes one image work and another turn out uninteresting. The truth is that it’s everywhere as you walk down the street and modern cameras are great at capturing it with their great high ISO quality. Don’t be afraid to crank up the ISO to capture the light that you see. Trust me, a little noise in the image won’t matter if you have the light—right.

For another take on this subject— Seeing the Light: More than a Cliché —read Joe’s post on his blog, ‘Saving the World, One Pixel @ a Time.