Ebook Review: Seeing the Light by Mitchell Kanashkevich

Beyond cameras, lenses and assorted gear, photography needs one thing: Light. A simple truth: If you don’t have light you don’t get photographs. Learning and mastering light is a life long endeavor for a photographer. How do you harness it? Shape it? Sculpt it?

Seeing the Light: Making the most of Available Light and Minimal Equipment, an ebook by travel photographer Mitchell Kanashkevich, is detailed resource for photographers, explaining the mysteries of light and how to best use it. Kanashkevich is a minimalist. As a travel photographer working in remote locales he uses only what he can carry.

While the minimalist approach has drawbacks, says Kanashkevich in his introduction, “There has always been a tremendous amount of creative opportunities even without artificial light, so when you use something as simple as a reflector in combination with sunlight or a single flash with light from a fire or a light bulb, our creative opportunities multiply.“

Seeing the light has three sections: Flash, Reflector Light, and Natural Light. Each section starts with an explanation of the gear Kanashkevich uses. His flash section gear list includes a flash, a trigger, a softbox, and color gels. Following a brief introduction to flash settings, exposure, and balancing ambient and artificial light, the flash section uses a series of photographs and lighting diagrams to explain using flash with and without ambient light, indoor and outdoors, as well as working with light bulbs and fires.