Lighting

Every photographer knows about visible light being used to capture photographic images digitally or with film, but there are other kinds of light that we can't see. Light with wavelengths from approximately 700 and 900nm (nanometers) is called infrared light. Interestingly, this band of infrared light is a thousand times wider than that of visible light, but is invisible to...

Taking good close-up pictures of most any small subject a foot or less away from the lens is relatively easy these days, what with the macro-focusing capability found on some zoom lenses. That's no problem when you use available light. But what happens when you want or need to add auxiliary light to the scene? The tiny flash built into many current SLR cameras is designed to...

There's an old photographer's joke that goes: "If God invented light, then the devil invented fluorescent light." How times do change. With digital capture, fluorescent light can be your friend and I don't mean those long tubes hanging in lighting fixtures from the ceiling. I'm talking about a new breed of portrait lighting tools designed...

If there's one thing that makes pictures shot by leading professional photographers stand out from the pack, it's lighting. But while it's relatively easy to get precisely controlled lighting effects in a well-equipped studio, these pros have to deliver consistent studio-quality results in the field--whether they're shooting on location in a dark...

Photos © 2004, Jay Abend, All Rights Reserved

The look of flash photography has been a problem for photographers for decades. As we migrated from huge silver reflectors stuffed with flash bulbs to smaller and more portable electronic flash units, the look of on-camera...

In the Western US, sunrise and sunset photography can often be especially challenging because there aren't any clouds. Without clouds or haze, the sky simply fades from a very pale, burnished blue to gray. No drama. No flash of color. No spectacular...

Anyone who's ever been on a movie set is sure to have a sense of just how involved the lighting setups can be. Because shooting for film is very involved, expensive, and takes up a lot of time, production teams need to be able to create their own...