Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Forget Mr.White, today we’re Breaking Clay!
I am a long time follower of Clay Cook, and one thing that always amazes me is his softly lit group shots. I mean soft light for one person is easy, but a group is a whole other story. I sat with Clay (well, virtually sat with Clay) and asked him about his workflow.
Hey Clay! I can see a lot of interesting factors here that I think the readers will want to know about.
Let’s start top and work our way through.
One of the first things we learn as photographers are F stops and how we can use them to properly expose a photograph, but there is also such a thing as T stops and we don’t always give them the attention they deserve. Of course, a T-stop may not be essential knowledge on every photo you take, but understanding what a T stop is will give you a better understanding of light, which is never a bad thing for a photographer to have. (It’s also helpful information to have in your bag if you’re going to be lens shopping soon!). And Matt Granger does an amazing job of explaining the difference.
Ever since I started photography I had a thing for lighting. Nowadays, every time I see a picture, I can’t help it but to analyze and breakdown how it was lit. In this article I will share my analyzing process, step by step.
I believe understanding light can make a huge improvement to any photographer’s work, and practicing light-analysis is definitely one of the better ways to do it. When was just starting out, analyzing light on Flickr photos I love was a huge learning experience for me.
There are plenty of way (or tricks) to analyze light, this is how I do it, feel free to share yours too.
The first thing I do is break down the lighting into 4 hint-groups: Catchlights, Shadows, Highlights, and Background lights.
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