Light Is
Everything
Yes, without light we have no images, but luckily for us, we have a fabulous lightsource at hand, but do you fully understand how light works?
The word Photography comes from Greece, photo meaning light, and graphy meaning drawing; Light drawing, or painting with light.
As soon as you realize that, you also come to realize that light plays a rather significant part in photography, of course, without light there would be no photographs, no photons to work with!
The way in which light works can vary, but I cover all this later on in the advanced section of this publication where I talk about off camera flash and lighting set ups.
To work with light, to get the very best from your subject, you need to fully understand how light plays its part when illuminating a subject.
I remember years and years ago reading in some photography magazine that the best way to understand how light falls on subjects is to take a regular egg, and move a single light source around it, so you get a feel how light and shadows work together as one.
It is very good advice, and one that I would recommend anyone try at home.
But I would experiment on a more suitable subject as well as a plain egg. Something that has definition. An egg is all well and good but it only has 2 profiles, the horizontal view where either side is showing, which side? Who knows! And the vertical view, which is the same from above as it is from below.
A more fitting subject would obviously be yourself. Though a friend would suffice, but seeing as this is about self portraits, it would be best to just sit in front of a mirror and move a suitable light source around your face and head.
I would refrain from using a torch, they are too harsh a light, a bedside lamp would do the job nicely though.
Just move the light around, in front of you, above you, below you, behind you. Your face will look different wherever the light falls.
From below the light feels odd, scary, gritty, ideal for some subjects, not for all however.
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