Time-Lapse Photography Art and Techniques by Mark Higgins

The clouds have moved, letting direct sunlight through the clouds. This means that the quality of the
light is now harsh and this helps lift the shape of the building and gives it some colour.
Learning about light
Before we break down the fundamentals of working with light, let us go right back to the beginning
and ask a very important question: what does photography mean? The word ‘photography’ is derived
from ‘photo’, meaning ‘light’, and ‘graph’, meaning ‘drawing’, so the literal meaning of photography
is ‘drawing with light’. This shows that light is not only the most important aspect to think about as a
photographer, but it is what photography basically means in the first place.
The four main words to help you think about light are as follows: quantity; quality; direction; and
colour. This is an invaluable way to assess any lighting situation in order to use it more successfully
and improve your image making. We will look at each of the ‘big four’ individually and explore the
relationship between them.
Quantity
The quantity is simply how much light there is in any given situation. If it’s a bright day there is a
large quantity of light and at night time there is a small quantity of light. Knowing how to react to
different amounts of light is what most people struggle with when using their camera. One of the
reasons why your camera has shutter speed, aperture and ISO settings is to control the quantity of light
that you let into the camera and therefore how bright or dark the images appear.
If we are working with natural light, we are given the quantity and we have to work with what we
have; we are unable to control the light but we can control how it looks in the picture with the