Well, I may not understand F-stops and stuff like that, but I do understand the principles of good lighting. You want the light behind you and lighting up the subject facing the front of you. Etc.
Except when you don’t! A good portion of my photos have the sun behind the subject, as front-lighting causes squinting and all sorts of not good stuff. Plus backlighting produces beautiful hairlight accents.
What modern cameras excel at is the technical aspects of photography – like you say, F-stops, shutter speeds, focus, low-light photography, etc. You can just stick it on an automatic mode and concentrate on the creative part (though you still need to have knowledge of how choosing aperture, shutter speed, and focal length creatively affect the photo.) Most photography out there in the wild is still pretty average. Sure, the colors are brighter, the contrast is better controlled, grain/noise is non-existent, but the average person is not good at composition, reading light, and choosing focal length, and post-processing doesn’t change that. Like they say, you can put lipstick on a pig …
Truth is, though, with AI tools getting more and more powerful, I will not be surprised if in a decade or so AI will be able to lipstick on that pig and make it look beautiful, correcting all lighting and composition shortcomings.
Only if you’re a real photographer. LOL
Trust me, “back lighting” for me leaves my subjects looking dark. I can take some really nice pictures, but I have to stay withing the skill set I have, otherwise it can get ugly.
[Tangent]
We ought to have a thread somewhere for simple nontechnical guidelines to avoid ugly photos.
If I could tell folks a few basics about portraiture…
- Avoid bright midday sunlight. Overcast days are like one awesome huge softbox evenly lighting features.
- Hold the camera at chest level for whole-body shots to give people a flattering look, more like a model.
- Don’t use wider-angle lenses (e.g. standard cell phone lens) for closeups–it gives that mouse-face look.
- Get on the floor if you are photographing children.
- Portraiture is where to use those nice wide apertures if your lens has them. Just make sure the closest eye is in crisp focus.
Just by following a few guidelines most people can produce far better photos!
ETA: YMMV on all of these, of course. There are times when you want bright midday sunlight, and so on. It’s a creative choice!
ETA2: Not an expert by any means, this is stuff I wish someone told me when I got my first nice camera. I bet I’m doing loads of dumb stuff till this day, and hope to learn easy ways to avoid mistakes of my own.
[/tangent]
Excellent tips!
Well, my very first medium-format film photos in my life just came back from the lab!
Check out the thread to see the first photo … as well as the others in the 3 rolls of Tri-X 400 I sent off. I’m very happy today!