Lighting Tips to Help You Take Better Pictures

In this day and age of digital cameras, you’ve probably heard or thought that all you have to do is push the button and great pictures magically appear.  Not so fast.The fact of the matter is, you can have the best digital camera, but if you have no clue in what you are doing, you are gonna take horrible shots.

I would love to give you some good tips to help you improve your photography skills.  These tips are coming from years of experience as a San Diego wedding photographer.These tips are all about the lighting and they will some of biggest reasons for you success in taking photographs.

First great tip in regards to lighting.Now if the shots you will take are going to be outdoors during the day, the natural sunlight will be some of the best lighting possible.  Now you are probably thinking, “that’s easy, when you are a San Diego photographer since it is always shiny there”, when in actuality really bright sunlight can cast harsh shadows.Or it could blur the details of faces when the sun is overhead.

Overall, you are going to want to take most of the shots with the sun behind you.This eliminates any harsh shawows from effecting your shot from the sun.But there will be those times and instances when you want different angles to get those shadows into the shots.

Now that we have tackled the day shots, what if you are taking shots at night? 

The key to taking photos at night is turning off your flash.Of course if it is absolutely dark with no light you wil need it, but for times when there is some lighting, use the lighting around you, but make sure the shutter speeds are slow enough to let light in.Also, stay steady when you are taking your photograph or you will cause the picture to blur.  Doing these couple of tricks can make a dramatic difference when taking night shots. 

The final piece of advice to use for lighting is using the golden hour to capture great shots.There is this time that photographers like to call the golden hour or magic hour, and that is sunrise and sunset.

These times of day you wll be able to capture great shots because you will get the more warmer and inviting colors.You’re going to be able to capture the golden lighting you won’t find during any other part of the day.

There you have it.Probably the biggest secret in taking great photographs is taking advantage of the natural lighting.  Knowing what techniques to use for different parts of the day, or just scheduling a photo shoots to capture those times of day will help you become an excellent photographer.