Technically speaking, when a photographer presses the shutter-release button on a camera, he is recording light on a piece of film. With this thought in mind, it's important for you to closely observe the lighting conditions, the shadows and highlights, in a scene before you take a picture.

In most situations, you want your main subject to be in the highlight areas because, when you look at a picture, your eye is usually drawn to the brightest part of the scene first. If your main subject is hidden in the shadows or shade, someone looking at your picture may be in doubt as to what or where that main subject is.That's not to say, however, that part of your subject cannot be hidden in the shadows, as in the case of dramatic portraits, when side-lighting darkens part of the subject's face, adding a sense of mystery to the image.

Realizing a scene's highlight and shadow values, however, is not enough. It's also important to observe the scene's contrast range, that is, the difference between the scene's brightest and darkest areas. If the contrast range is beyond the contrast range of the film (print film has a wider contrast range than slide film), part of the scene will be much too over- or underexposed.

There's hope, however, for an evenly exposed picture if you learn how to compress the scene's contrast range.

You can compress (reduce) the scene's brightness range in four ways.

One: Recompose your scene or reposition your subject to eliminate the areas that are too dark or light.

Two: Use a flash to fill in some of the shadows in a scene.

Three: Use a gradual filter (dark on one half and clear on the other) to darken the brighter portion of a scene.

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Four: Use a reflector to bounce light onto a subject.

Seeing and maximizing the color of the light is important, too. In the early morning and late afternoon hours, the quality of light is warmer, meaning that you'll get deeper shades of red, orange and yellows in your pictures. This is beautiful light for outdoor landscapes and seascapes.

At midday, the color of light is much cooler, which gives a blue cast to pictures. If you want to warm up the light at midday, you can use an 81a warming filter.

So the next time you look through your camera's viewfinder, think about seeing -- and recording -- the light.

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