Here is a list of some composition elements.

1. Lines
2. Curves
3. Monotonous content
4. Pattern
5. Framing
6. Symmetry
7. Balance
8. Rule of thirds
9. Golden triangles
10. Golden Spiral and Phi Ratio

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Image sensors’ sensitivity to light can be controlled. Each camera’s image sensor has a range of light sensitivity going from low to high. This is the ISO. When you set you ISO to a bigger number, the sensor becomes very sensitive to light. This will let you take pictures in low light conditions such as in indoor parties or sports, theaters, concerts, churches, etc. There is a drawback on doing this. The higher the ISO the higher the noise effect. The noise effect is the appearance of grain as shown here in this picture. If you want to have crisp pictures you will need lower ISO. A 100 ISO option is the normal rule. Some image sensors produce less noise in your pictures at a high light sensitivity than others. But generally we still want to keep the ISO low unless we really need it for poor light conditions, for really fast movements, or for extreme zooms or telephoto shootings without a tripod.

When we increase the ISO, the image sensor becomes very sensible to light and, therefore, you need less light. The shutter speed then needs to be open for longer time too and/or the aperture needs to be smaller.

I suggest playing less with the ISO leaving it in the lowest possible number and focus on aperture and shutter speed more instead. I modify my ISO when I can’t have a bigger aperture and a fast enough shutter speed combination. Depending on your camera model and/or settings, aperture mode or shutter speed mode won’t alter the ISO. So if you take a picture on Aperture mode at an aperture of f22 (which is a small aperture), the shutter speed will be open for a longer time, but the ISO will remain at whatever number you decide.

Now you know the exposure triangle. Aperture, shutter speed, and the ISO are the three things that affect the exposure of your pictures. It is important that you become really familiar with each one of these so you can take photography above the average picture everyone takes.

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We are talking about the three elements in the exposure triangle. We discussed aperture and now we will talk about shutter speed. As I just mentioned in the aperture section, shutter speed is the amount of time the shutter is open. Shutter speed is measured in seconds or fractions of seconds. And the bigger the denominator (the number below the fraction) the faster the shutter speed. For example 1/3000 is a lot faster than 1/30. Having a slow shutter speed like 1/30 or slower will get you some blur in your pictures. If you take pictures of cars or people moving with a slow shutter speed then you will get blurred cars and blurred people. Also when people use a slow shutter speed, they may get camera shake and camera shake is when the picture looks all blurred because of the natural movements or shaking of any person taking a picture. When taking pictures at a slow shutter speed you need a tripod or any other base that can hold the camera completely free from shaking or any other movements.

Shutter Speed Options

Cameras have several options for shutter speed. Many cameras give you slower options than a second. Perhaps 10 seconds, 30 seconds, or even a minute. Other cameras have the B option or “bulb” option which lets you keep the shutter open for as long as you have the shutter button pressed down. So I could just stay there for 5 minutes or for a lot more pressing that button while the picture is being taken.
See this picture for example. It was taken completely at night except for the car lights. It was taken with the bulb option.

Measuring Shutter Speed (sort of)

Usually pictures taken faster than 1/60, or perhaps 1/120 are the ones that you also will be shooting in the most common scenarios. However, if you have telephoto lenses, you will need to increase the shutter speed too or use a tripod. Have you ever tried to look through some binoculars without shaking or moving too much? That’s how it is with a telephoto. Everything looks shakier when using telephoto lenses.

And that’s it, we talked about shutter speed, now let’s talk about the last part of the exposure triangle, the ISO.

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Aperture Mode and What’s aperture?

Lenses let light pass through an aperture. Look at the image below. On the left side you can see a narrow opening, in the middle you see a bigger opening while on the right side you see a complete wide opening.

The size of the aperture determines the quantity of light that will be present in your picture. When the aperture is really big, a lot of light is coming in through the lens and when the aperture is small then less light comes in.

When there is a lot of light coming in, because of a big aperture, then the shutter speed needs to be open for less time otherwise the picture would be overexposed, in other words too bright. On the other hand, if the aperture is small, the shutter speed needs to be open for a longer time so you pictures don’t get too dark.

When you use your camera in the Aperture Priority mode, you can choose the aperture and you camera will do everything else automatically. And, as I just mentioned to you, it is important to have the right shutter speed for the aperture you choose. In Aperture Priority mode, you only choose the aperture and forget about the shutter speed because it is the camera the one that will figure out a proper shutter speed for your aperture.

NOTE: If you have a DSLR, bridge or MILC camera you can set Aperture Priority mode.

If you want to take faster pictures, let’s say for example you want to freeze any type of action such as in sport movements, your pet jumping, kids moving around, people dancing, etc., you need to have a big aperture so more light comes in and the shutter speed needs to open and close at a fast speed. On the other hand, if you want to have some motion blur in those pictures, then you need a small aperture and a slow shutter speed.

Depth of Field

Another thing that happens when adjusting your aperture is something called depth of field. That is, how much is in focus.

Shallow depth of field

With a very large aperture you have a very shallow depth of field. This means that if you focus on a particular object, everything in front and behind that object will be out of focus, it will be blurry. And why would you want that? It is usually to eliminate background distractions and/or create some interesting effects. This is particularly nice if you are shooting a portrait and you want everything behind that person to be blurry. So large aperture gives you shallow depth of field.

Wide depth of field

If you want to take a picture of a garden or landscape and want to have everything in focus at once, you need to do the exact opposite: Use a small aperture and a longer shutter speed. A small aperture gives you a bigger depth of field.
Now you have an idea of how aperture works. I’m going to show you some pictures and you will try to figure out if they were taken with a big or small aperture.

Measuring aperture

Now let’s talk about how to measure the size of the aperture. Aperture is usually written f followed by a number. It is a fraction. F stands for focal length, but you don’t need to worry about what it means. If you have a DSLR camera, a bridge camera, or a MILC camera you will be able to see options with numbers that measure the aperture. Because aperture is measured in fractions, the bigger the number the smaller the aperture. Some big apertures are f/1.8, f/2.4, f/3.5, and f/4. Small apertures are f/16, f/22, f/32
The numbers depend on your lenses. Average small aperture found in lenses may be f/4 or f/3.5. If you want bigger apertures to produce a really shallow depth of field or take pictures under very low light circumstances without your flash, you will need to get different lenses that have f/2.8, f/2, f/1.4, etc. Usually the smaller numbers tend to be the most expensive lenses. For a bridge camera you, of course, have to stick with whatever aperture range your built-in lens has.

I have mentioned some numbers, but you don’t need to know much about math and all that, you won’t do any calculations. You only need to memorize the principle. The smaller the number the bigger the aperture. Or you can also try this to remember: the smaller the number the smaller the depth of field. The bigger the number, the bigger the depth of field. By knowing this principle then you can go from there and play around with these numbers. There is no right aperture number, it all depends on what you are shooting and what effect you want to produce. Don’t think that you have to go either by the biggest or smallest aperture, there’s always in between too. Play with different aperture numbers.

Next let’s talk about shutter speed.

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Exposure Triangle

One of the basics and most important things you need to know when learning photography is the exposure triangle. The combination of three elements produce different effects on the pictures you want to take. Usually you want to compensate one with the other. The elements of the exposure triangle are listed below. Don’t worry if you don’t understand them right now; we will talk about each one of them.

1. Aperture. The aperture is the size of the opening in the lens when a picture is taken.
2. Shutter speed. The shutter speed is the time that the shutter lasts open when a picture is taken.
3. ISO. It is the camera sensor’s sensitivity to light.

Let’s us begin with aperture.

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We will now talk about color temperature and something we use in our cameras called White Balance. But before that, what does color have to do with light? In case you didn’t know, color exists thanks to light. We already talked that light can have direction and intensity. Well, in a sense, light can also have certain color temperature that make things look the color they look. Learning how light works, how is that every visible thing receives light and it can either reflect it, absorb it, let it pass or some sort of combination of all these three, is a topic of its own. A very interesting topic, but in this book I’ll make it very simple for you and skip that part. So let’s continue with light and its color temperature.

Have you ever noted that some pictures turn out slightly yellow or blue? This happens because cameras are not as good as our eyes to adjust how things should look. Some sources of light tend to make things look more of one color than of another. We call this the color or temperature of the light. And just to clarify, in photography, when we talk about color temperature don’t think of weather temperature or touching the light and feeling it hot or cold. Think about colors only. There are warm and cool colors. Red and orange are defined as warm colors; blue and cyan, on the other hand, are cool colors. The light of a candle make things look orange, or in color temperature vocabulary, the light of a candle make things look warmer.

Since light can give your pictures a warmer or cooler color temperature than what it should be, cameras need to adjust that. When your camera fails, you can prevent it or fix it manually. This is done with something called White Balance. So you can think of white balance as a solution to adjust colors. White is the most obvious color to notice whether it has a warmer or cooler tone, so we need to balance it and make it pure or true white. This is why the name White Balance.

Your camera may have the AUTO white balance activated, meaning that the camera decides what the right color temperature for your picture is. But again, it doesn’t always work; besides, you may even want to change the color temperature on purpose for certain effects. This is also why you have the option to turn off the auto white balance and use a different white balance setting to adjust your next shots.

To be honest this is something that I don’t worry too much about. I can always fix the color temperature very easily in my computer. But there are of course those who may feel frustrated when their pictures turn out too blue or yellow and don’t have the software or desire to fix their pictures in their computer. This is why we will discuss it here.

Where is the White Balance in my camera?

White balance is usually labeled as WB on many cameras. Cameras have it in very different places. You may find a dial or a button for it, but I don’t doubt that at least it will also be somewhere on the menu shown on your LCD screen. If you can’t find the White Balance check your camera manual to see where it is on yours. Once you find this option, you will be able to adjust the color temperature in your pictures. If you are using the LCD screen, you will probably see the immediate effect of white balance adjustments on the picture you are going to take. If your picture has a strong non-natural color. You may want to adjust the white balance.

Adjusting the White Balance

Once you have found a way to change your white balance, you will notice that it may either give you names or numbers as your options. It also depends on your camera, but the principle is the same.
Color temperature is measured in kelvins (K). Lower numbers give you warmer colors while higher numbers give you cooler colors. Many cameras, especially DSLR cameras will give you this option to set the color temperature based on these numbers.
Most cameras, however, regardless whether you can choose kelvins or not, these cameras will have some sort of presets or pre configurations for your white balance. You may see some of these symbols below.

Each symbol is for a particular kind of light. Because there are different types of light, there are also different color temperature tones you see on the same object. It all depends of the type of light. Take a look at the chart below to understand what each of these icons do.

[IMAGE Chart of options and/or different WB modes]

Now that you know how to adjust the white balance, you should keep in mind that this adjustment in your camera must be done before taking the picture. A common practice is taking a picture of your subject in the setting first just to see how the white balance will turn out. That’s a quick test. Check that colors are right, if not, make adjustments and take another picture until you get the right color temperature. Once ready now you can take the real picture you want.

Be Professional, But Don’t Worry Too Much About White Balance

As I said before, I don’t worry too much about it because White Balance can also be corrected after I take a picture (this is called post-processing), but here are two things to consider:

JPG format vs. RAW format. If your picture is taken in a JPG format instead of RAW format, (I’ll say more about picture formats later) then you lose some color or image information that will reduce the flexibility to do adjustments. In my case, I take pictures in RAW format and part of the reason is because I leave the white balance in auto and focus on other things such as aperture, shutter speed, framing, etc. And if my picture needs white balance adjustment, then I do it easily in my computer.

Quantity of pictures. If you are taking a lot of pictures of the same subject under the same type of light, you don’t really want to fix every single picture afterwards because they will come out very similar, better fix the White Balance at first and then take the rest of your pictures. But when I say fix, I don’t mean getting too stressed about it. It won’t be the end of the world if your picture doesn’t have the perfect white balance. Especially if you take pictures in RAW format. If you shoot in JPG, and it is only the picture of your life, then make sure you fix the white balance first by taking a picture before your most important shot so you know how the white balance is going to be.

Either way it is a good and professional habit to check once in a while the last picture you took just to make sure you are shooting with the right settings.

Exercises

Now go out and take a few pictures of the same subject. It can be the picture of a house or a tree. Preferentially something static. Each picture will have only one difference: white balance settings. See below the settings.

Picture 1: This picture should look blue

Picture 2: This picture should look yellow

Picture 3: This picture should have a neutral color

If you want to take things a step further, you can also try to see how your picture looks under each one of your camera white balance settings. Be familiar with all of your white balance options.

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• Sunlight
• Window light
• Open shade
• Reflectors /Translucent diffusers
• Artificial light
• Candle light
• Off camera flash
• On camera flash
• Video light
• Continuous fluorescent
• Black light
• LED

Light travels from its source in the way of light beams. Some sources of light spread light beams everywhere and others are set in a way that all light beams are directed to go towards a particular direction. A flashlight for example, it is made in a way that it directs all the light beams just to wherever you are pointing to.

[Image of light beams.]

If you are in a dark room, turn on a light and direct this light to an object, that part of the object will be well lit, but the other side of the object will be dark. Pretty simple, isn’t?

[Image of light shadows.]

In photography, and if physically possible, you can light up your subject from any 360 degree angle or from any position within an x, y, or z axis. Or said in easier words, you can light up your subject from virtually any position: left, right, front, back, above, below or any combination of those. But, not just that, you can use more than one lighting source too.

Light can produce different effects on your pictures depending on the direction it comes from. Use the same light but in different angles and you can make some people look different. You already know that light can produce shadows. If light falls on one side there may be shadows on the other. Here are some examples of light direction and their effects on your pictures.

Front light

Front light is any type of light coming from the same direction of your camera. If you are taking a picture of a person and the light comes from the same side of your camera, the person will have front light. It doesn’t matter if the person is facing sideways or turning her back towards the camera, it is still front light because the light comes from the camera side. A common type of front light is the flash light that comes right from your camera when you take a picture.

Front light tends to eliminate many shadows. Shadows are in fact behind the subject and we cannot see them in the picture. By eliminating shadows you also take some depth away. A picture that could look more like a 3D is turned into something flat. Front light may not be ideal for architecture since structures would look two-dimensional. For nature, front light will also hide the texture of fur and feathers, rocks, and trees.

A face looking at the camera under front light tends to come up with less texture and less detail. This would probably be something that some people would appreciate; especially those with bumps or marks on the skin of their face or those who are concerned of the size of their nose or cheekbones. Older people with wrinkles may also prefer pictures with front light.

However, front light may be less dramatic and in some cases too predictable, common and/or boring.

Side light

Side light is any type of light that appears on the left or right of your subject. Again, it doesn’t matter whether the subject is facing the light. Light direction is identified in relation to the camera, not the subject. This also applies to which side light comes from. Light from the right side is light from the right of the camera, not the right of your subject. Likewise light from the left comes from the light side of what the camera sees, not the left side of your subject. Many pictures, for example, show side light when people are being photographed next to the window during the day.

Side light (assuming there is one light only) will show one side while darken the other. Side light is good to bring some texture. It will bring more depth to your picture. Curved shapes and bodies will gradually show a transition between light to darkness giving some sort of volume or three dimiensional effect. And if we talk about people, cheekbones will be better defined. But along that any skin texture such as blemishes or wrinkles. One side will be lit while the other darkened. Side light boosts the contrast and puts strong weight on facial expressions.

Back light

Back light is when the light is behind your subject. Or put in different way, it is when the subject is in the middle between your camera and the light. Back light is very dramatic. It is great for silhouettes and strong contrast. You will see most of things black and only a rim of light will be visible around people or animals. In semitransparent subjects this may create very appealing results such as back light passing through the petals of some flowers making them glow.

Back light is not good for keeping details nor facial expressions, it is for shapes and stories. Back light tends to take color away from objects on the foreground. Back light could also be vulnerable to lens flare, so you should be careful.

Light from above

Light from above is light above your subject. This produces shadows underneath the subject. If you take pictures of people with light from the top shadows will also pop up beneath the eyes, nose, and chin. It is very common to find light from above in pictures taken around noon when the sun is right above on the sky.

Light from above can be good for some drama and very interesting effects.

Light from below

Light from below is any type of light coming from beneath your subject. It is not common to find it in portraits because it makes people look sinister and extremely dramatic. Light from beneath is not just for these effects, when used to lit water on a fountain, a ceiling, trees and a lot more can simple make things look very inspiring. Perhaps you have seen a few pictures of people with light from below when they have a candle or a fire under their heads.

Light from other angles and multiple sources

I have mentioned basic directions of light, but in reality your light source can be from any point in between those that we have mentioned. Light can be positioned in angles, such as 45 degrees above or towards the left, etc.

[Image about light angles.]

Light can also come up from different sources simultaneously. In fact it is so common to see different sources of light falling on your subject. If you combine them properly, you can make magic with your pictures. You read that light will make one side visible while the other side will not. When you add an extra light, you can control those shadows and give them some shape. Many photographers do that in a studio. Have you noticed that many of them have at least two or three sources of light when taking a simple portrait?

In many cases especially outdoors, what you will want to do is compensate light with other sources of light. You can also redirect light.

What if I can’t move the light?

We often change the light to fall properly onto a subject, but you can also position your subject in a relation to the light. So if you can’t or you don’t want to move the light source, move the subject. Remember, it’s about direction of light.

Exercise 1

Take a magazine with many pictures of people and try to recognize where light comes from.

Exercise 2

Pull your camera out and take seven pictures of someone looking at the camera all the time. These pictures will only show the face, neck, and shoulders of the person. Don’t take a picture of the whole body. You will use the same light source for all of them but from different positions. I would recommend using a portable light source. If you don’t have light equipment, you can simply use a flashlight or a hand lamp. If there is additional light in the room, don’t worry about it, just make sure the light you will move is brighter on your subject. You will take seven pictures under the following light directions:

Picture one: A picture with front light.

Picture two: A picture with back light.

Picture three: A picture with light from the left.

Picture four: A picture with light from the right.

Picture five: A picture with light from the top.

Picture six: A picture with light from below.

Picture seven: A picture with two light sources. One front light 45 degrees above and another light on the right side.

The purpose of the exercise is for you to practice a couple of things, especially 1) That you experience what we photographers have to deal with every time we take a picture, which is taking in consideration light direction and 2) that you see how light affects your own pictures.

You have now learned about light direction. You know that light produces different effects depending on its source direction. You also learned that light sources can be combined with multiple light sources. Next time you take a picture of your friends or anything else, see where the light comes from. Think of what effects it will produce.
You will learn some tips about how to take better portraits later in this book. Right now you just need to focus on the principle of light direction.

Also if you want to learn more about light position take a look at these videos

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Don’t worry if this sounds too vague or general, your objective at this point is learning how to change the aperture number, not what you can do with it or what is it for. You will learn more about aperture and shutter speed and the cool things you can do with them in the section of exposure. For now keep in mind that in aperture mode you set the aperture to whatever number you want and the camera will figure out what the shutter speed should be.

Where is the aperture control? Besides the dial to change modes, most DSLR cameras have a second dial also on the right side of the camera, either on the front or the back, which can be used to increase or reduce the aperture. It can be a ring on the right top or a circular controller on the back. Be aware, however, that in some cases, especially with older lenses, you change the aperture using the lens itself by rotating an aperture ring. Moreover, some non-DSLR cameras (especially point-and-shoot cameras) may not even have a direct controller to change the aperture. In some of these cases, changing the aperture number may be possible by navigating through the menu displayed on the LCD screen.

It is essential you know 1) how to set your camera to aperture mode and 2) how to increase and decrease the aperture. If you can’t find a way to do it in your camera model, look for the manual and learn these two things.

IMAGE showing horizontal ring type or view from the top type of ring.

Exercise: Take your camera and 1) set your camera to Aperture priority mode. 2) Change the aperture mode to different numbers so you can see how the numbers change and make sure the flash is turned off. 3) Take a picture set at an aperture of f-22 and another picture at f-5.6. 4) Take more pictures at some other different aperture numbers of your own choice.

Note: You may notice that taking pictures at smaller apertures (the bigger numbers) you camera may take longer time to take a picture and your picture may end up blurry. This is normal when you have a slow shutter speed. There are ways to prevent this or ways to profit from such blurriness to produce wonderful pictures. You will learn more about it in the exposure section. For now if you get blurry pictures, don’t worry. The purpose now is learning how to set the camera modes. Taking wonderful shots comes afterwards.

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Hard Light

Hard light or hard-contrast light produces hard-edged shadows. These shadows are sharp and clearly defined. These shadows bring dramatic effects and boldness; they give a strong definition of what’s in your picture. Hard light is about texture and contrast. Examples of hard lights are the sun, and camera flashes.
With hard light shadows are most likely to be visible. And the position of the light source in reference to the object will determine the length and position of the shadows. In other words, light will make longer or shorter shadows as well as where they will be located. You can easily see this everyday, go out around noon and you will see small shadows beneath the trees, cars, and people. Go back a few hours later when the sun is close to sunset and shadows will be a lot longer and located to the opposite side of the sun.

TIP If you are taking pictures of people outside in a bright sunny day or with any other type of hard light, you can ask people to close their eyes for a few seconds before the picture. You tell them that at the count of three everyone will open their eyes for a second without squinting their eyes and making unnatural gestures. This also works great in group pictures where you know, there may be someone who closes his or her eyes right when you take your picture.

TIP Avoid pointing your camera to the bright sun without any filter and longer periods of time. It could damage your image sensor. And even worse if you are looking through a viewfinder, it could also hurt your eyes. Sunsets and sunrises are fine. The light of the sun is not too bright, but be careful if the sun is the only thing you are focusing on in your picture.

Soft Light

Soft light or low-contrast light sources produce soft-edge shadows. In other words, these shadows are soft and not well defined. If you approach the image very close you won’t be able to easily tell where the shadow starts and where it finishes.

Soft light tends to “wrap” around objects. If you wanted to wrap an object with a piece of fabric, you would need a bigger piece of fabric for that object in order to cover it completely. The same principle is applied with light. You need a bigger source of light than the object in order to “wrap” that object with light. This means that light will fill most of the object filling in more of the potential shadow areas. And when the light source is small, it won’t have enough coverage to wrap around and fill the shadows. However, no matter how big your light source is, you lose softness when the light source is farther. Think of the sun. The sun is bigger than any object in earth, but it casts strong shadows because it is far away. But when we have cloudy days, the light of the sun spreads all over the clouds and light comes almost from everywhere in the sky.

So soft light depends on the distance and size of the source of light. The closer the light source, the softer it becomes. And the the larger the light source, the softer it becomes. Soft light can be found during overcast or foggy days. You can also find it at home through semitransparent window curtains diffusing the light from the sun. Soft light may bring some peace, nostalgia, and sensibility to your pictures. There are not hard shadows. You won’t notice hard textures, but shapes.

IMAGE an object showing difference between hard and soft light.

Hard light or soft light, which is better?

So which type of light is better? No one type of light intensity is better than the other, it all depends on what you want to accomplish. In fact many times you may even want a mixture of both in different degrees. However, you will often find that choosing your light intensity won’t always be possible. This is why photographers use different techniques, tools and ideas to try to adjust light intensity. Some of these are screens, reflectors, flash, softboxes, umbrellas, or any other materials that diffuse light.

These are some photography tools and equipment to diffuse light. Click on any image to see name tool/equipment, features, reviews, price and comments in Amazon about each one of them.

Controlling light intensity

As a beginner, don’t worry about buying expensive and fancy tools. You may want to get them later if you want, but it really isn’t necessary for now. You can make your own tools or find different solutions. For example, you can find diffuse light under the shade of a tree. You can cover the light with something semitransparent (be careful not to put it too close that it may burn with the heat), and even a regular umbrella may do it.

The idea of learning the two types of light intensity is for you to recognize the effects in your picture and decide how you want your picture. And do you remember at the beginning of the book on the section of creativity? Here it is where you can come up with your own ideas and solutions to solve your lighting problems.

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In photography, it is common to see people looking for a place to take a picture and say something like “Oh, look at that nice wall” or “look at that window; we will take a picture there” but hardly “Oh, look at that light; let’s take a picture there”. Many people don’t focus on lighting, which should also be a priority.

In order to control something you need to know enough about it and the same goes with light. If you want to control light in your pictures, learn about light. You don’t need to know the science behind it, but some basics is a good start.

In this section you will learn some of these basics that will help you to recognize, categorize, and manipulate light in such a way that you will be so surprised how powerful a couple of simple applied principles can improve your pictures.

Light is a topic itself and books have been written just about light in photography. But in this course, I’ll omit a lot of the scientific and theoretical parts of light. I would only ask you to learn a few things about the characteristics of light.

Let us forget for a moment about all other aspects of photography, even whether a picture is beautiful or not, and let us focus only on light. Light has a degree of diffusion, direction, and color temperature. These three aspects of light can be the main pillars or foundations of your pictures as well as the most refined finishing touches. Let’s briefly talk about each of them, but please don’t overlook any of these because knowing it is what will separate you from many amateur photographers.

We will talk about these three things:

1. Degree of Diffusion
2. Direction
3. Color Temperature (or White Balance)

Ready? Let’s start with degree of diffusion.

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