Lighting is the one element that makes all aspects of photography possible. Your technique, your talent, your poses, your post-production – it’s all important but none of it creates the right results until you master lighting.

In the first of a two-part series, Instructor and lighting guru Cris Duncan shares the science of lighting and how it combines with your artistic abilities to create the perfect images.

Explore characteristics of light such as texture, dimension, color and shape. Learn how to achieve exact exposure, and techniques like metering that help you to do that. Discuss the various stops to measure exposure and how to use other mechanisms – like ISO, shutter speed and apertures – to control what you need.

But you don’t stop there – explore 8-stop and 4-stops, creating reflective and incident light, controlling ambient exposure, depth of field, and the benefits of F-stops and fill flash.

From equations and ratios to adjustments and settings, you’ll learn the artistic techniques and the scientific knowledge critical to creating the perfect light.

In any other setting, this amount of information would be mind-boggling but Cris breaks it down in an easy-to-understand, informative and applicable way. It’s enlightening, it’s illuminating! All puns aside, it’s something you cannot miss!