Lessons Learned: Selective lighting

Studio photographers spend long hours setting up lights to create a perfectly lit environment. Likewise, using only the powers of observation and good old-fashioned sunlight, an available-light photographer can benefit from dramatic lighting setups, too.

Having a forest canopy overhead is decidedly a good news / bad news situation. On one hand, many of your subjects may be blocked from direct sunlight (which can be either good or bad), and on the other hand, natural spotlights that find their way through the taller plants often help present the subjects below in a spotlight worthy of a true diva. (With a touch of mist in the air, the beams become visible, adding a new and mystical character to the scene.)

This rose-colored orchid found herself brightly displayed as I wandered by looking for beauty, so the resulting picture was inevitable.

As you can see, the orchid is sidelit from the left, which adds drama to the modeling (modeling is the way light defines the shape of an object) with an added bonus: the brightly-colored yellow center of the flower becomes backlit on its left side with a resulting glow that adds a welcome accent to the image.