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Successful photographers and artists have an intimate understanding of the importance
of light in shaping an image. Rembrandt was a master of using light to create moods
and reveal the character of his subjects. Artist Thomas Kinkade’s official tagline is
“Painter of Light.” The late Dean Collins, co-founder of Finelight Studios, revolution-
ized how a whole generation of photographers learned and used lighting. Photo guru
Ed Pierce conducts seminars called “Captivated by the Light,” that reveal his secrets for
portrait lighting. It’s impossible to underestimate how the use of light adds to—and
how misuse can detract from—your photographs.
All forms of visual art use light to shape the finished product. Sculptors don’t have con-
trol over the light used to illuminate their finished work, so they must create shapes
using planes and curved surfaces so that the form envisioned by the artist comes to life
from a variety of viewing and lighting angles. Painters, in contrast, have absolute con-
trol over both shape and light in their work, as well as the viewing angle, so they can
use both the contours of their two-dimensional subjects and the qualities of the “light”
they use to illuminate those subjects to evoke the image they want to produce.
Photography is a third form of art. The photographer may have little or no control over
the subject (other than posing human subjects) but can often adjust both viewing angle
and the nature of the light source to create a particular compelling image. The direc-
tion and intensity of the light sources create the shapes and textures that we see. The
distribution and proportions determine the contrast and tonal values: whether the image
is stark or high key, or muted and low in contrast. The colors of the light (because even
“white” light has a color balance that the sensor can detect), and how much of those
colors the subject reflects or absorbs, paint the hues visible in the image.
As a Nikon D7000 photographer, you must learn to be a painter and sculptor of light
if you want to move from taking a picture to making a photograph. This chapter
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Making Light Work for You