Where’s The Drama? It’s all in the Lighting

Often the first line of advice from any professional photographer to us aspiring amateurs is ‘lighting, lighting and, probably, the lighting’, with the specific recommendation to use natural daylight whenever you can.

Flowers – internal shot taken at dusk with no post-production colour adjustment .

Obviously, it is not always possible to get the shot you are after with the available natural light in your chosen setting which is a great pity but sometimes unavoidable – so you end up trying out photographic lights.

However, as an amateur I find natural light really is by far the best when photographing flowers especially when you are trying to capture that little essence of nature. Now, as I’m sure we all know all daylight is not equal, but I was really quite surprised by the difference between mid-afternoon and early evening when I tried out this small experiment taking internal shots of my mantlepiece.

Mantlepiece – photo taken in the middle of the afternoon (15.30)

Mantlepiece – photo taken in the early evening on the same day (19.15)

Ah yes, I hear them spinning in their graves and their groans of boredom as all the Old Masters mutter on about aspects of windows, geographical location and time of year . . .