Bright, even lighting
Lighting can make or break a photo, but you don’t need expensive photography equipment to make sure your photos are well-lit.
What does bad lighting do?
Bad lighting can:
- Engulf people and things in shadow.
- Blow out details or entire sections of the photo in highlight.
- Make it difficult to tell what the photo is of if it’s too dark.
- Increase the chance of noise (grain) in your photos.
- Increase the chance your photo won’t be in focus.
- Create unbalanced, unattractive photos.
Examples of bad lighting and ways to fix it
A few easy ways to fix bad lighting are:
- Go outside, where the light is bright and more even than inside. But don’t stand in the bright sunlight – find some shade or shoot on a partly cloudy day.
- Photograph your subject against an evenly-lit blank or subtly-textured wall or another surface.
- Turn on more lights if indoors, and make sure the same amount of light is on both sides of the subject.
- Don’t photograph indoors facing bright windows. Especially don’t have your subject stand or sit in front of the windows.
- Use a flash if it’s too dark.
Uneven lighting
The photo above has very uneven lighting, and it makes the photo unbalanced and unattractive. It also suffers from a lack of focus and poor composition.
Ways to fix this photo
- Move closer to the subject – this would eliminate the dark and bright rooms as well as the lighting issues.
- Turn off the lights in the room on the right – this would make the lighting more even across the photo and allow the camera to choose a better exposure. This way, the shadows also wouldn’t be so dark.
- Don’t place the subject in front of a reflective surface (the framed picture in this case) – the reflection creates a bright, unappealing highlight right next to her face.
- Instead, have her stand in front of an evenly-lit blank wall, or go outside.
Poorly-lit
In the photo above, the room is poorly-lit – it looks like the lights in the room are off and all the light is coming from the windows.
Ways to fix this photo
- Turn on the lights! This might also help the white balance in the photo, which is quite blue.
- Photograph the students with your back to the window – this way the light would be more even and bright, rather than all coming from one side.
Other photos with windows that are too bright
