 Photography is the art of writing with light. And if there was one thing that I wish I could go back and tell my younger photographer self, it is to understand light, to kind of really get to grips with it as soon as you possibly can. How's it? How's it? Light is such a tricky little thing, isn't it? It's because we can't, we can't hold it. We can't really, you know, we can't really feel it. We can't physically move it around. How do you manipulate light? How do you bend it to your will when you are not working with studio strobes or something like that? Do you're working with the untamable natural light that is all around us? The first thing then is to look for light. Like actively look for light. Look around you right now, depending on where you are. If you're watching it at night in a lounge or a darkened room, then see how little pools of light are interacting with things. If you're outside on a bus or whatever, see, you know, see what the, look around you. Look and see what the light is doing and really look at it. Don't, don't just think that you know what it's doing. Really look, see if it's, if it's like I've mentioned today, you see the thing in the window is now gone. Those light changes all the time. And if you're aware about how it looks, how it, how it manipulates the scene, then you're taking a step towards actually being proactive with it rather than just letting it ride roughshod over you. As you're out there looking at all the light and seeing what it does in our friends back again, so many times he turns up during the video, then something you will notice is often light is accompanied by shadow. Of course, yes. So usually when there is light, there is a shadow of some description and shadows, I feel tend to get overlooked quite a lot as a, as an element of a scene. But of course they can be really profound. They can, they can add so much to your photographs. You can of course hide distracting elements in shadow. You can use shadow to make images or make colors feel brighter. Right. My face right now is brighter, from an illumination point of view, but also it stands out more and has a bit more of vibrance to it because I'm against a darker background. If this background were a lighter color, my, my color, the color on my, my, you know, my jumper and all that sort of stuff wouldn't be as pronounced. And you can think about this. We've all done this where we've driven along. There's like a storm. Again, there's a common theme this day, right? There's a storm cloud. There's this dark brooding clouds and the sun is coming down behind you and the trees that are lit and picked up against that dark cloud have a almost iridescent feel to this, this, this strong warm color. That's because it's against a, it's contrasted against a dark background, the brooding sky. So think about that. If you want to make colors feel stronger, more powerful, then contrast them with shadow. Alex Webb does this and I mentioned Alex Webb a huge amount on this channel. That's for the good reason. And I will link to his video at the end of this, but I would highly recommend it if you are thinking about how to, you know, combine and contrast colors on a day-to-day basis. Look at his photography. It's no secret that light influences mood, how we feel about certain scenes. You know, the, the bright, burning, washed-out colors of a desert makes us feel warm. It makes us feel like we are, you know, being bleached almost by the day. It's not a very welcoming feel. And conversely that the, the, the, the moody blues and the grays and stuff of a winter scene also put us in a certain state of mind. They make us feel cold. They make us want to wrap our coats around us. So don't overlook the power of what color and lighting can do when you want to convey a certain mood in a photograph. You know, if you want to photograph Yosemite, for example, as a more of a quiet sort of place, less of a dynamic, strong, you know, sort of empowering, not empowering, as a ridiculous landscape, but a strong, you know, a strong energetic presence, like a lot of Ansel Adams' photograph is the Yosemite R, photograph Yosemite when it's flat lighting, when everything is a little bit more still, a little bit more calm. So you can see how they, you know, we're familiar with the scene and yet it changes, depending on how the light looks, how the clouds look, how everything comes together. So that's kind of really a very ham-fisted way maybe of explaining how mood looks in your photograph through, through the use of light. But I want you just to be aware the next time you're out there, how to change things up. If you want to do a portrait that has more of a summary feel, you know, sort of that sort of thing, then photograph with the sun just peeking around the edges of the subject, you know, so they're lighting up, so their hair is all backlit. And, you know, those kind of things that we traditionally associate with summer, if you want a cool, cold look, then you want that very flat lighting that we associate with winter and overcast skies. Light can be, as I mentioned, a really tricky subject. And let's just break it down into the really simple aspect of it. So you understand next time you're out there in the field with your camera when you are in the world at large, at least you can start to recognize the different types of light at your disposal. So the first light really is kind of, it's front lighting. So what we all kind of assume is it's this, if the lighting is coming down 45 degrees, it's the sun, it's what we traditionally, you know, think of as sort of basic lighting. But then we have something like side lighting. So now my face has changed a lot, hasn't it? Right? I now have some very unpleasant looking shadows on my face because the light is sort of coming in from the side a little bit and it's picking out all the shadows on my face and giving you more of a texture. And that isn't necessarily the most flattering look for me. And of course, now I'm being back there. I've just got my kicker on. That's the only thing that's really here. And I have changed the way that you interpret me now. If I did this entire video like this, you would go, this is a weird looking thing. I can't see my, I can't see the speaker's face. And it would really kind of start to be quite odd. Because I'm giving a mood in the image that isn't necessarily one that is conducive to talking with somebody. So now we're back with it. So this is kind of, you know, those are simple sort of ideas that I haven't changed. I haven't moved, right? But I lit myself in three different ways that radically alter the way that you interpret the scene. And that's kind of what you want to do when you're out and about is thinking about how you can either move the subject, right? You can, if you're photographing somebody and you want it as a day, really, you know, like today with the clouds that are being either wise and there's no real nice light for photographing somebody, what you can actually do is turn them around, right? So rather than the sun coming in their face, right? Turn them around, so the sun's behind them. And then obviously their face or their head creates open shade for their face. It's a little sort of thing. But see how, you know, you're not moving the sun, you're not moving the subject really, just asking them to turn around 180 degrees. And it radically alters the quality of the light into something that's more flattering for that subject. If you're photographing something where you want lots of text, where you want it to be picked out, then move so the sun is now 45 degrees or not, you know, 90 degrees to the subject and see what you can do. Or if you have the patience all the time, you know, wait until the sun moves. Shoot at those twilight hours as those, you know, the blue hours, the golden hours, all these concepts, they all change the quality of the light. They make your photographs have more of a different feel to them. You can photograph the same scene in the morning, in the lunchtime and in the afternoon and get three very different photographs. Light is very much an active or a passive participant in your photographs. So if you go back to the little guest in the window there, he was an active participant in the image, right, what you're looking at now. But the light that I'm using to illuminate myself is passive. He's not really changing. He's not changing. Everything is very much the same. And you can think about this like with natural light, that a cloudy overclass day where the light is all very even and soft. That is a passive light. Whereas our friend outside, because the clouds are going miles across, you know, because of the storm that's been coming over the last couple of days, the light is changing all the time. It is actively changing the way the scene looks. One minute there is a strong, light, very sharply defined shadows in the next minute. It's a muggy, cloudy bluchness. So look at the light. Think about, is it going to be influencing the scene or do I have to not really worry about it? Can I use it and sort of forget about it? When you start thinking about light in these terms, when you actively out there looking at it, then you're beginning to start to recognize the different qualities that it has and how these can change the way the image looks, how the image feels. And I really think that the more that you spend time looking at light, irrespective of what you do, if you're a street photographer, if you are a landscape photographer, if you're still like, you know, it doesn't matter. You really want to be looking at light all the time. You want to start getting it as you intuitively understand how it's going to shape the way that your images feel. I mentioned Alex Webb again earlier. Here's the video. Go check him out. He's fantastic. I love his photography. Thanks ever so much for watching and I'll see you again soon.