It’s a simple tip, but rewards you with more compelling images. Are you paying close enough attention to the details?

In this two-minute video from David Bergman for Adorama, he breaks down one of the fundamentals for photography: the light. Of course you need any sort of light to make photos, but it’s also critically important to pay attention to the areas of brightness and darkness in order to convey what you’re trying to say in an image.

The reason for this is our eyes tend to be drawn towards the lightest areas of an image first, as well as areas of high contrast. Bergman uses the example of photographing a woman in a white top against a black background. If the photo is supposed to be about the model, this is not going to work because the top is far too distracting.

There are a few different ways to deal with this, such as either asking the model to wear something darker, shooting against a lighter background to reduce the contrast against the garment, or modifying the light source to accentuate the face and not so much the clothing.

Check out the video above to get all the tips Bergman shares and start creating better portraits today.