[6-08] "Lighting"

What makes a photographer? Experts say it has to do with lighting.

Lighting is the characteristic of light emanating from many objects.

Light exits (an object) in many directions (angles):

Think about an ocean: inside a house the image on an ocean does not form on the wall. Rather the ocean brightens the wall—indiscriminately. The ocean do not emit light, by the way; it reflects light (usually sun light).

Lighting here refers to illumination; a candle in dinner does not appear as candles on the walls.

When the camera was invented, the goal was for light from many sources to focus on a film sensor, producing a permanently sharp image: each source of light, with a unique intensity and color, produces what we see, which we call an image (i.e. vision).

The ocean, sky, and trees all reflect different amounts of light (and color); a camera relies on the assembled sensor, lens, and shutter capture this.

When I started [p], lighting was not really on my mind.

We tend to think it should be, and that photographers are masters of it, when this might not the case; the goal is simply to record.

If (too dark) → underexposure; (too bright) → overexposure.

Most photographers (wildlife, sports, documentary) do not participate in adjusting the lighting; they work around it. But if an event takes place at midnight, lighting isn't even a choice for the photographer. It's simply a constraint. The photographer did not position the light; it had to be worked around.