Photography, Lighting, and Post Processing

As with most things, different people have different opinions.  In photography, what is the most important thing to understand?  In my opinion, assuming you've learned how to use your camera, lighting is most important.  If you're shooting people, then would come posing and composition.  I was going to say next is post processing, but you can hire someone for that.  The first three things you have to do yourself.

Lighting is too large a topic for here - there are many books only about lighting, as well as some good webinars from time to time on CreativeLive.com, as well as lots of other online resources.  The main thing is to be able to see the light and understand how it will come out in the final photo.  For example, I wanted to test my new 50mm f1.8 Nikon lens, so brought my Nikon to the beach instead of my beach camera, saw someone I knew who had just finished playing paddle tennis, and asked her if I could take a few photos.  The sun was out, it was around 2-2:30pm or so, so direct sunlight was no good (I had to diffusers or reflectors with me).  But there was a wall by the courts that was in the shade and the lighting looked good, so asked her to go there.  The results are below.

I shot only 10 photos, used the camera's RAW setting, at ISO 250 and at f4.  Then used LightRoom to even out the light on her face due to the bit of a shadow from her visor, and finished up with Portrait Professional.

Besides using LightRoom and Portrait Professional, I experimented with two other programs - Nikon software for their RAW images (free from Nikon, but only works with images shot with a Nikon), and the DxO Pro Optics Elite 8.5 (free from DxO - see my previous post if interesting in getting that program).  The Nikon program was almost identical in converting the RAW to JPG.  The DxO was interesting - it automatically adjusts a number of variables, sometimes making the image better, and sometimes worse, although there are sliders to adjust pretty much everything, so it will do a pretty good job.

Hope you found this helpful and informative.  And that you've had a great weekend, too.

Oh - and please comment if you would like.  Would love to get feedback.