Light affects every part of a photograph, and the way light reacts to an image can help create the way you want an image to look.
The mood of a photo can change depending on the intensity of the light or where its going to be pointed, and where you focus. The lens will cover a wide angle or close right in to the subject, and a large basic background will show out of focus but and set the narrative for the shot.
Moving close in to the subject puts a lot out of focus, but enough of the photo can be seen and we’re able to understand what is going on.
This photo is part of a base I have been messing about with a background that roughly looks like a view from a sci-fi planet. The light is coming from the front and the background gives a sense of scale to the subject
The photo also creates a high contrast effect showing reflected light from a distant planet if you like. The light comes from above and right.The cool part of this is that you can manipulate where the parts of the shot are in focus and give the feeling of distance either in front, or behind the subject, and giving a sense of mood in a night shot.
The background can be anything you want as long as it is big enough not to overlap the original photo after cropping, what you paint or put up is totally up to you, I have the background board, and if I get fed up with it all I have to do is change to different colors, spray it over and start again..There are a lot of videos that can help in that, and using acrylics or Oil bring out a great variety of background depending on what you are taking photos of. In a later blog we will go over how we can paint a background to suit a subject we are going to photograph.
These photos are using a camera again with a 24-105mm lens, but you can get the same effects with a phone, next time we will look at how we can reflect light and how it will change the subject focus.
0 comments