It's Break Time!

In the first tutorial we learned of three basic principles that are key to photography, and the philosophy of a 16th century poet named Basho who said (loosely paraphrased), "learn the rules and then forget them". I suggested breaking the rules rather than forgetting them, as I don't believe that forgetting the rules will make you a better photographer! I don't believe in breaking the rules just to break them either, you want to break the rules only if it will improve your photographs.

Let's start with;

Exposure

Most cameras have an automatic mode and a light meter built in for the single purpose of helping you to get what the camera thinks would be the correct exposure when taking a photograph.

When film was the primary exposure medium, this was much more important than it is today. With film, a typical roll was 12, 24, or 36 exposure long, and the whole roll was processed chemically the same way. The size of the silver halide crystals on the film determined how much light was required to turn the silver halide into a developable image, and the sensitivity to light remained constant on the entire roll. The image sensor in a modern digital camera st ill requires a certain (optimum?) amount of light to create a digital image, the difference is that unlike film, the light sensitivity of each shot can be changed on a shot by shot basis. Correct exposure is still important, but the way you go about obtaining correct exposure with a digital camera has changed. With film, you put in the roll, set your film speed (known now as ISO) and shoot the whole roll at that film speed, modifying ONLY your shutter speed and aperture to ensure enough light reached the film for good processing later. Digital cameras can change the ISO or film speed from shot to shot, because the images can each be individually and differently "developed" in the computer later! Let me re-emphasize that good exposure is still important, I'm just saying that getting good exposure is much easier than it used to be. In addition to auto/variable ISO, some modern cameras also have a computerized light meter that analyzes hundreds and even thousands of areas in your scene and then compares that to a memory bank of scenes for the purpose of offering better exposure settings than a normal light meter might be able to! More on this later.

It is pretty hard to take an incorrectly exposed image these days! Why would we want to mess with modern metering systems with years of research and development and artificial intelligence behind them? Why break this rule?

Because we can. Because we want to be different. Because we want to be better. Before digital, you didn't get to see how the image turned out until you had the film developed, or developed it yourself. If you didn't get what you wanted, you learned what to change and did it the next time. Roll by roll you hopefully became a better photographer. With digital you can look right there on the back of the camera, or on the computer screen and nearly instantly see the image. If the image looks darker than you had thought it would be, change the exposure settings and make another exposure! If the image looks just like you thought it would, change the exposure settings to make it darker or lighter and you may find you prefer one of those exposures over the original. Image by image you can become a better photographer, literally right now!

There are many ways to break out of the rules of Automatic Exposure. try any or all of these;

Take the camera out of automatic mode. In manual mode you can choose how much light to expose to the image sensor.

Bracket your exposures. with bracketing, you can take a series of exposures under, normal, and over what the camera would do.

Shoot in raw. With RAW image files you can push or pull the exposure (over or under) later in the computer.

Breaking compositional rules

Breaking compositional rules is easy. Doing it effectively and making it look good is a little more difficult. Compositional rules are followed because they tend to make photographs more pleasing to the eye. So why would you want to break this type of rule? One reason might be to make images that are less pleasing to the eye. Tension, chaos and confusion may be the intent of the photographer. Another reason to break this rule would be to change the viewers focus or attention. When viewing images of pe ople, the viewer normally looks at the face first, predominately the eyes, then the mouth and expression. Partially obscuring the face (as in the example shown) causes the viewer to scan the image inside the frame for alternative centers of interest.

Breaking the rules for light

OK, so you can't really break the laws of physics! We will bend them a little. Nope, you can't do that either. What to do? Use the rules of light to your advantage. How? Light modification. reflectors, diffusers, umbrellas, softboxes, snoots, etc.

First and maybe the most obvious thing to do is supplement the light you have. When you are outside during the day, your light source is the sun. The sun has a very specific location depending on the time and the season, and the light produced is not under your control. The best you can do is photograph at optimal times (early morning, late evening) when you like the suns position and direction. The direction of mid day sun is generally undesirable, often times pushing you into open shade or waiting for some overcast. The easiest way to supplement the single point source light called the sun is with a reflector or a flash.

Reflectors are my suggestion, especially if you are just starting out. You can get a 5-in-1 reflector that folds to fit your camera bag or case for about $33.00. No batteries, and no recycling times! The reflectors large 40" diameter produces a very soft shadow with the white material, a semisoft shadow or specular reflection from the silver or gold material, subtract or block light with the black surface, or lower and spread light with the center diffuser.

For times when there isn't a whole lot of ambient light to push around (such as indoors or like the example above) use a flash or strobe. A flash generally refers to a small portable unit and a strobe is more commonly a larger more powerful unit, but they are basically the same thing. There are many differences between strobes and reflectors but the main two are;

1.) Reflectors reflect existing light and therefore cannot be any brighter or even as bright as the light they reflect. On the other hand, a strobe is a new light source and its brightness and direction is variable by you, less than, more than or balanced with existing light.

2.) Reflectors are larger and produce softer shadows. Strobes are small point sources of light producing hard edged shadows, (unless you bounce or diffuse them through a reflector).

To have the widest number of lighting options and styles available, you must mix and combine strobes with reflectors. More on that later, for now just focus on one at a time to learn the specific properties or qualities of each.

Here is a youtube video showing a flash and a 5 in 1 reflector in action.

Summary

Breaking the rules is really all about controlling the final image.

Exposure - compensation. Control the brightness of the image

Composition - arrangement. Control the perception of the subject

Lighting - location. Control the number and direction of light(s)

Once you have control of your images, you can start to develop the most important and greatest variable of them all - your style. Often when I ask a photographer their style, they tell me about their subject. example, "I'm a natural light portrait photographer, keeping it real", or, "I'm a commercial product photographer". Those aren't styles, those are niches. Style has to do with your "tone". If you were a musical artist, would you be an opera singer? A pop singer? A punk rocker? Those are styles. All three can sing songs about love or angst (niches). How you sing them is your style. How you create and control your photographic image is your photographic style.

Speaking of niches, I challenge you to break out of the boundaries of your niche if you have one.

Example:

Many photographers devote their whole careers to natural light photography and that's great. Here are two examples (above and below) that would be hard to pull off with natural light only. With a flash, you can put the light inside the subject. Try that with the sun. Go ahead...break out, break the rules!

Tutorial #3 CRAP photographic composition