Image composition – light and shadow

We need light and shadow to visually perceive the environment, which makes them key to our vision itself. Light and shadow are therefore just as important in photography. The light draws the shapes and creates shadows. This article will give you a better understanding of what options are available with respect to image composition using light and shadow, with a few different images provided as examples.

In my photography, I work very closely with light and shadow to better bring out the character of the subjects. In landscape photography, a lot of patience is needed to get the perfect lighting conditions. I often need several attempts before everything is just right. Failure is always part of the process. That way, you then know exactly what you will need to do differently next time.

You can respond much more directly to adjustments in studio photography. For this, you have to stage everything yourself. So I’ll start here with some staged examples that you’re welcome to recreate as well. By “studio”, I don’t necessarily mean a professionally equipped photo studio, but also staged photography at home, using some very simple techniques. You can find suggestions for simple techniques that you can use in the tips.

In this second still life, you can see how the same light as above (side light) hits different objects, thereby bringing out different textures from the surfaces. So in the case of the aubergine, the shine on its skin is highlighted in particular. The opacity of the grapes, which are illuminated in their entirety, is also visible. What’s key with the light is not only its direction and strength, which then affects the brightness of the subject, but also its harshness. “Harshness” means whether the rays of light all hit the subject in parallel, thereby creating harsh shadows with strong contrasts, or whether they come scattered from all directions (diffused). A simple example of this is sunlight as opposed to sunlight through mist. (see examples below)

In this photograph, I used the soft evening light to make the leaves’ veins glow and reveal the velvety fur around the leaf. The background was in shadow – that’s why the leaf glows like that. For a similar photograph, I recommend strong evening light so that the sun can still shine through the leaf pigmentation.

Unlike the image of the Alchemilla, here I used a spot of light at the end of the forest to put all of the attention on the cowslip. The spot of light attracts the eye and contrasts with the flowers, which are illuminated yellow. As an eye-catcher, the gaze ultimately wanders to the little beetle, which, with its dark colour, contrasts the most with the light.

In this forest scene, the diffuse light created by the mist ensures a mystical atmosphere. There is no longer any clear separation between the foreground, middle ground and background. In this photograph, the line of sight should lead from the clear, sharp, saturated foreground to the background, ending in soft light.

To separate the hills from each other, I waited for just the right moment to be created by the cloud formations here so that certain hills were in sunlight while others were entirely in shadow. In this way, they contrast with one another and create a graphic abstraction.