Lighting is one of course one of the two critical components of any visual art, the other being composition. It is untrue that every good lighting scenario needs to be a complex set-up. You can get a great image out of nothing but a little foresight and planning, with the simplest of lighting conditions present. Here’s a look at one such situation.

This photograph was taken at dusk, as is evident – on a beach in India. It is true that the sight was a pretty sunset to start with, and nothing was or could have been done to enhance that. However, the sunset would have been completely lost had the camera made exposures for the subject. On auto mode, with the camera pointing directly to the subject, the camera would have decided that there is not enough light for an exposure, and made up its electronic mind to fire the flash, to make a perfect picture. It would not have compensated for the beautiful background (IF you has pointed the camera at the subject alone).

On the other hand, what gave this silhouette effect was the fact that the camera was pointed at the background and not the musician, and exposure settings were made for the twilight. On a fully automatic mode, this would simply mean half-pressing the shutter while you point at the sunset and then re-composing your frame to fit in the guy with the guitar. The fact that the sunlight is much brighter than any light falling on the musician, we get a good exposure on the sky and under-exposure on the subject – thereby giving us a perfect silhouette. This photograph was not photographed with a high-end digital SLR. It was made using a compact camera using the technique mentioned here.

You too can make great images with existing light. In fact you needn’t even own a flash to get such images as mentioned in this article. All it takes is to be a little more observant than usual – look at hues and shades like the camera does. Our eyes quickly adjust to help us see better in a shadow area. On the other hand, the camera can only expose, or adjust itself for one specific area, the others being over and under exposed as may be the case. Start with shooting a silhouette yourself. All you need to do is position a model against the sky and expose for the sky. It may be a bit trickier at twilight, so try your hand at it in broad daylight first. While shooting in dim light, use a high ISO level such as 400 or 800, if you are getting shaky images.  Do let your imagination tell you how you can make variations of this technique – use a car headlight to illuminate a wall behind a subject, shine a torchlight or use a cinema screen as background! Anything that makes your work original is well worth the effort, and goes a long way to define your own identity as a thinking photographer.