The mood of a photo is the feeling you get when you look at it. It can make you feel happy, gloomy, romantic, or even angry. A photo can evoke these different feelings in different people, but usually a striking photo is not accidental. You can get the composition and the settings correct, but capturing the mood is harder than it might seem at first. Listed below are four ways to create mood in a photograph to make it more compelling and thought-provoking.
- Lighting
For whichever mood you’re trying to achieve, it’s best to consider your outdoor lighting. The golden hour is the hour as the sun rises and before it sets, which creates great shadows and light rays. Overcast days are great for dimmer, diffused light. And then other lighting, like artificial and moonlight, are the best for night photography. Using the on-camera flash is a definite way to make your photo feel more unnatural looking. Maybe that’s your goal, but if it’s not, ditch the flash and adjust your settings to achieve a cozier feeling.
2. Using a wide-aperture
Opening up the camera’s aperture will allow more light to come in without using a flash. Remember that aperture is measured in f/stops, and the lower the number the wider the aperture is to let in more light. Setting your aperture at a lower number will also focus on a certain point and blur the rest. It’s easier for a viewer to feel a part of the photo when it’s free of clutter and they can fill in the blanks themselves.
3. Emotions
Emotion is very powerful in images, and this is especially so when it feels more candid rather than posed. Most people can tell the difference between a person who is fake-laughing in an image and someone who is actually laughing. Raw emotion is a sure way to bring out the happiness or drama in a scene. This can be found when others are interacting with one another. These might be just fleeting moments, so recognizing them and then capturing it can be difficult but rewarding.
4. Color
Post-processing the color in images might make the mood of a photo change. Depending on the mood you want, changing the temperature of the colors in a picture can help you achieve this. Shooting in RAW mode will be easier to change the colors without losing the quality of the picture. By changing the color, people will be able to tell the difference between a cool morning or a warm summer day. You can also experiment with converting your colored image to black and white. Black and white photography creates a sense of nostalgia and dramatic flair.
Hannah Matt 
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