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Part 1
My mother liked to say that “lighting is everything.” It was one of many bon mots she had at the ready. I always thought it a kind of funny vanity thing, but over the years, I’ve come to value it as something more serious. A kind of trade secret. A mantra. An approach.
As a photographer, one of your main preoccupations is light. It’s an elusive part of the occupation, often misleadingly broken up into Natural Light and Studio Light. But in both cases, it gets exceedingly complicated the more you explore it. Today, when I think about the role of light in my work, I think of light almost reverentially. Maybe more so now than even my camera or lens.
Not every image requires beautiful light — or whatever we conceive of as beautiful light — if you are a photojournalist or macro photographer, this may not be a thing you like to think about. But certainly if you do architecture, portraiture, landscape, editorial or fashion photography then it is likely a preoccupation. What is beautiful light? Is it the sparkling, hard-to-put-your-finger-on-it quality of crisp, maybe atmospherically-enhanced sunlight? Is it evening light, right as the sun sinks into the ocean in its dripping yellows and oranges? Is it dramatic, single-source light, like a midnight lamp in a foggy London park? Is it all of that? Is it whatever you want it to be?
