Did you know that our eyes tend to look at the brightest part of the photo first? When working on the composition of your photo, keep this fun psychological fact always in mind. This is one of tips that photographer David Bergman shares with us in his quick 2 minute Youtube video on Adorama TV channel.
In fact, let’s perform an experiment. In the first photo below, the sky is overblown white, while buildings are in the shadow. As an instinct, your eyes to tend to look towards the sky first, leaving buildings much lower level of attention.
Now, on the contrary, if we make sky darker and highlight buildings instead, like seen on the second photo below, our eyes shift the attention of buildings more.
The same trick can be applied towards portrait photography as well. When placing a model in front of the camera, if the outfit is white or very bright, it might steal the attention from model’s face.
Of course, to remedy that, you can play with the intensity of the light on the strobe. Or you can change a modifier towards more directional light by putting a grid, or even using a snoot. However, it might still get you an undesired result.
The easiest fix in this case is to have your model dress in darker outfits. Just look at how the perception of the model changes as she is dressed in black.
Keeping in mind this lighting trick will hopefully boost your performance as the photographer and help create better quality results. Tune in to David Bergman’s 2 minute quick tip videos on Adorama TV channel. This photographer never disappoints!