The great painters of 1600-1700 are the great source of inspiration for my work as a wedding photographer. In their painting the lights and shadows are very important. Caravaggio impossible not to mention that in his dramatic exploits this aspect to give strength to their subjects, as well as the Flemish painters among which Rembrandt and Vermeer that have characterized their work with this research. Lately I have also learned about the court painter of the Habsburgs at the time of Marie Theresa of Austria, Martin Van Meytens, I did not known before last summer but that his works have impressed me greatly.
Today, photography allows us to leverage what they have already used it in their works. The tools have changed, instead of canvas, brushes and colors, today we use photographic equipment, lenses and pixels. The thing we have in common is the study of light and composition, as well as the posing of the subjects. We photographers, of course we have the opportunity to do everything much faster than painters.
In my opinion, studying the works of the leading painters to growth, thanks to the understanding, but also to many questions; for example: the painter starts from light or shadows?
So many times I happen to leave the shadows and bring light to “draw” my subject, others to remove the subject from the light up to take him to the right balance between light and shadow. Just this game from the image the effect of three-dimensionality and makes the magical atmosphere.
Learn to see the best light with which to illuminate the subject is not easy, it requires time, experience and also a lot of passion. The best light is not always the strongest light, indeed, many times in the dim light to achieve very good effects. As I have already discussed in another article in this blog, even backlight is one of the light patterns that can be exploited and very often create very interesting situations.
The exploitation of the dark, or of the shadows, and the light allows us to obtain also excellent photographs in black and white are my passion, but I will talk about very soon in a future article.
