Taking Better Photos - Creating form and texture in your photos

This article was originally published in Encompass Magazine.  Copyright Jerome Shaw

Original URL:   http://www.aaa.com/aaa/006/EnCompass/2004/mar/mar_NewsToUse.html


Taking Better Photos
Creating form and texture in your photos
By Jerome Shaw

Key elements in any photograph are form and texture.

While form and texture exist in three dimensions in the real world, they must be rendered in our two dimensional photographs as shadow and highlight. The quality and angle of the light is the key to capturing both form and texture on film. Even subjects that have defined texture and strong form will not exhibit these qualities on film as intensely if you do not have strong directional light.

To capture strong textures and forms in our photos we do not want diffuse light—light from multiple directions or sources that softens textures and flattens forms. We want a directional light from a single source. Sunlight, when not diffused by clouds, dust, trees or other matter, is our primary single source light. It creates wonderful textures in our photos, especially when coming across our subject from the side and from a low angle in the sky rather than straight over head.

While textures are still present in our subjects even in diffuse light, they are not accentuated because of a lack of shadows. It is the shadow detail created by strong directional light that gives strength to the textures as they appear in our photos.

Rendering strong forms on film or in digital images is enhanced by having one side of the form in stronger shadow than the other. If the form is uniformly lit from all sides, the shape will flatten and any texture in the form will be minimized.

Days with strong directional light coming from low in the sky will help enhance the textures and strengthen the forms in your photos.

Jerome Shaw has been a professional photographer for 25 years and teaches workshops for beginner and intermediate photographers; www.jeromeshaw.com.