Photographing Schenck Forest with a Focus on Lighting

Many different people have many different approaches to photography. Still, there are universal components which, when intentionally manipulated by the photographer, can be used to create pictures with starkly different styles and purposes.

For example, I spoke with a portrait photographer who specializes in capturing people – in much of her work, the subject is carefully positioned to capture the best possible lighting and background. In her photographs, the lighting is perhaps more important than the preparedness of the subject themselves. Despite these general goals, to light the subject so that they appear lively and bright, she plays around even within these bounds. She’ll angle her camera so that the sun shines through the subject’s hair, creating a halo of golden light, or position the subject so that they’re doused in dappled spots of sun.

Thinking about these strategies, particularly with a focus on lighting, I decided to try to apply them to photographing nature.

I discovered perhaps the best example of how a slight few centimeters of different camera angles can completely change the lighting when I was photographing a spider suspended it its web. If I moved the camera lens just slightly, I could illuminate the web:

Please excuse the low picture quality here 🙁

Another angle, and I could make the spider glow:

And yet another angle, and it was cast in a foggy, blurred light:

All of these pictures were the same spider at the same time – the lighting was the only thing making them appear so different!

It was also interesting to play around with how the light hit the leaves (leaves on the ground, too!):

And the water…

And some pretty flowers too 🙂

I promise, these pictures look better on a non-blog-post screen. But, for now, I plan to expand my learning by next addressing other aspects of photography. In future X-days, I’ll apply what I’ve learned about lighting so that I have room to explore other facets, such as positioning, leading lines, and coloring.