A website for photographers that’s all about light.

Adventures in the light

The temptation is often to fix the bad light with good lighting, but that’s not always the answer, or always practical.

By working through actual shots from real world shoots, you can learn how to work with ambient light.

PLAY WITH LIGHT

ADVENTURES IN THE DARK

If adding light is needed to get the shot, you have a whole new set of variables to control, and that can be daunting.

Understanding real world examples can teach you how to get the results you need.

PLAY IN THE DARK

YOU’LL BE AMAZED HOW

SMALL FLASH

CAN ACHIEVE

BIG RESULTS

EXPLORE

LATEST LIGHT AND LIGHTING

BREAKDOWNS

  • “That’s The Shot”

    There are an infinite number of images we, as photographers, can take of any one scene in any one instant. Composition, fundamentally, is about deciding which of those infinite choices you pick for the shot. It’s informed by what camera you use, what lens you use, where you stand and when you choose to click the shutter. But with all you choose to do, there’s always an element of luck involved too.

  • Pushing the limits

    Some shots make you work more than others, and some shots make your gear work more than others. This photo is an example of a shot that made both me and my gear work at our hardest. So much so that I genuinely wasn’t sure if it would actually work at all. But why was it so hard to do? Well, very simply, I was working right at the limits of what my gear could achieve.

  • Under Pressure

    Some of the best wedding photographers in the world. A dark basement room with mirrors. A bag full of flashes. A couple of minutes to come up with a photograph, and just a little bit of pressure. How focusing on what you can control and using that to work with what you can’t control helps yield a result that requires none of the gear.

  • A Shot in the Loo

    This is very simple unposed shot, with no light added by me. The light is all what was already present in the scene. The challenge, therefore, is not how much light to use, or where to place it. In this case the required skill is to make the most of the light present, assessing it and putting it to good use.

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