“light”-related aspects
(also called “tones and colors”)
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1. “Light-related aspects” = “tones and colors”
“Light”-related aspects of photographs (tones and colors) include the general categories of brightness, contrast, hue, and saturation.
But the term “light-related” also includes burning, dodging, highlight detail, shadow detail, curves, levels, white balance, color balance, tonal relationships in monochrome (black-and-white) photographs, converting a film negative to a positive, converting a color photo to black-and-white, and various other light-related items.
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2. TTG photographers quickly learn the difference between non-“light”-related aspects vs. “light”-related aspects of photos:
• Non-“light”-related aspects (forms and shapes) can only be changed in a few select ways in TTG photographs.
• But “light”-related aspects not only can but sometimes must undergo significant changes after a photo is recorded in order for the photo to qualify as TTG (the example often given on this website is color negative film, for which all colors must be inverted for the result to meet P7).
Most depictions of things in photographs contain both aspects, light-related and non-light-related.
For more, see the Background Brief on “light”