Photography is the recording of light — understanding how it behaves matters as much as your camera settings.
Direction: front lighting is even but flat; side lighting creates dramatic shadow and texture; backlighting is trickier to expose but can produce striking silhouettes or rim-light glow.
Golden hour (shortly after sunrise, before sunset) gives warm, soft, flattering light — CAPTD's Golden Hour and Blue Hour calculators give you exact times for your location, no guessing needed. Blue hour gives a cooler, moodier light, good for cityscapes.
Hard vs. soft light: hard light (direct sun, bare flash) creates sharp shadows, suited to dramatic or graphic images. Soft light (overcast, shade, diffusers) creates gentle shadows, suited to flattering portraits.
Metering gets fooled by unusually bright or dark scenes — snow renders gray instead of white, a black subject gets overexposed. Exposure compensation (a simple +/- override on every camera) fixes this without leaving your current mode.