It’s All About Light
Basic rules to use when you shoot with your iPhone
When it comes to photography, it’s all about light. You can’t get start with iPhoneography if you have not clear how light is involved in the entire process of telling a story. Yes, all we wannabe photographer are nothing else then story teller who are using light instead of a pencil. So, get back to the light before starting this trip in iPhoneography.
Light is all around us. It can be direct, as the sun or moon light or a lamp in your house, or soft, let’s say with light source masked, e.g. light coming form sun hidden by cloud. In this second case, you can get a more 3D effect on the subject, while in the first one your photo will be more flat (this things is very well explained in Fotografia Smartphone by Gianpiero Riva. To accentuate the 3D effect light must come from one side of the image, hitting the subject from left or right. You can adjust the shadow on the other side using a reflector while you hit the shutter button. There are lot of commercial reflector at a reasonable price, but you can use also a white paper. For exemple, when you’re taking a portrait indoor you should ask your subject to pose near the windows, or in a position it will be hit by the source of light, and put a white paper at 30 cm or so. The more you put it near the subject, the less shadows will appear on the “other side” of his face.
When it comes to white, it is very important when you deal with light to correctly balance white color in your photo. When you shot indoor with artificial light, for exemplum, white surfaces tend to become yellow, instead if you rely on a cloudy light coming from outside your photo will have a little blue tone. You can correct this by locking white balance in a simple way with apps that let you lock the wb: focus on a white surface, or bring with you a white paper to focus on, and lock the wb. Certain apps, like Camera+, let you fix wb in post production with an auto-tool that will calibrate light for sun, cloudy, fluorescent, backlit and for different type of pic, like landscape or portrait. Snapseed and other editing app, by the way, gives you more tool do adjust light. This his sometimes helpful, but if you set the white balance before shooting you’ll get more realistic colors.
Light is also strictly connected with exposure. In many apps, like Camera+, Pro Camera or Camera Awesome and so on, you can set the exposure in a point other that one on which you choose to focus. This helps you to manage light entering inside your lens. In Pureshot and 645PRO you can also set the exposure manually, i.e. looking around for the correct exposure and then lock the cam (AE locked). In some cases this will bring you to have clear nearby object and very white, burned sky. With 645PRO you can fix this problem by using a neutral grad filter. You can also fix that in post production, applying a simple filter o texture that return the sky to its natural color. Obviously, if you have not burned the sky.
In a lot of this case, when you are taking picture of subject with a lot of backlit, it’d be useful to opt for a shooting app like Pro HDR, or native camera that also has this option of controlling high dynamic range. This will require you much time to get the picture, and you’ll have to hold securely you iPhone, but it will bring you back a well balanced images. In Pro HDR you can fix color, saturation and other things before saving the image, accentuating the pastel effect or removing it.
There are at least two other things to keep in mind when it comes to light. You can have four type of lights, as photographer Karl Taylor explain in his free course on Udemy: hard, or direct light, and soft light in fact can come with transmitted light, i.e visible source of light in your image, and reflected light, like the light coming from water at the sea.
Lots of best pics will have all of this kind of light, while no one is fundamental and you can take wonderful photo in any light situation. For me it’s very difficult to deal with all things, but knowing all of them, and especially look at your pics with that in mind, will help you to improve your iPhoneography skills. Lots of people say rule number one is not shoot in the light: they’re wrong. Rule number one is indeed it’s all about light. I am sure there should be more and more things to know about light, but I thing that this is enough to start my trip in iPhoneography.
This is a personal project with two goal: learning how to better shoot with my iPhone and improve my English. Every feedback and correction is welcome.
