All Natural Photography. Using Natural Light.
One of the best light tools we have that is available to us for photography is the natural sunlight. It can be used for many different shot set ups. One of my favorites as I have featured before is back-light. The sun when at the right level is the best back light and really highlights your subject well.
Using natural sunlight from a window or in a shaded area can truly be a wonder light. It can be very soft and very dramatic. Let me share how I achieved this beautiful black and white image with super-model Joanna Krupa.
Here are my camera & setting. Nikon D800 F-stop f/7.1 - Exposure 1/100 - ISO 1000
When I start to setup a shot like this with natural light one of the very first things I do is find the right window with the right amount of light. One thing you do not want is a window with direct light. You need to find a part of the house that might have the sunlight hitting a very white part of the ground that will create a very natural bounce board of light on your subject.
Next I will start with my setting and make sure that I do not over expose the light on the face and loose any detail. You need to find the proper angle for your subject as you don't want to have hard shadows on the subjects face. I was fortunate enough in this setup and shot to get great light on Joanna's face and also keep some detail on my outside scene. Lots of times when you shoot like this you might experience the outside being blown out and that's okay as long as your subject is lit well. As you can see my ISO was set at 1000 so it letting just enough light in and giving me a great dept of field. Now what I do next is set a very small accent light at Joanna's back. For this I used a small portable flash that was maybe 25 watts of power. I placed it off to the back right of my subject. As you can see I now have really nice highlights on Joanna's hair and if you look at the top right of the photo the back flash lit part of the wall and gave me the separation from my subject to the background. If I didn't use the back accent light the back of Joanna and the wall would have been really dark and flat. Although that is okay for this look I wanted a bit more detail and highlights.
The other thing I love using window and natural light there is always a reflection of your subject on the window if you are able to maintain good detail. You can see in this image it is very slight but for sure ads to the photo.
The fact that I really wanted to do this shoot black and white really added to the beauty and more dramatic look.
Have fun with using window light and try different windows. Once you get the idea of how it works you will want to use it more often. - Peace
One of the best light tools we have that is available to us for photography is the natural sunlight. It can be used for many different shot set ups. One of my favorites as I have featured before is back-light. The sun when at the right level is the best back light and really highlights your subject well.
Using natural sunlight from a window or in a shaded area can truly be a wonder light. It can be very soft and very dramatic. Let me share how I achieved this beautiful black and white image with super-model Joanna Krupa.
Here are my camera & setting. Nikon D800 F-stop f/7.1 - Exposure 1/100 - ISO 1000
When I start to setup a shot like this with natural light one of the very first things I do is find the right window with the right amount of light. One thing you do not want is a window with direct light. You need to find a part of the house that might have the sunlight hitting a very white part of the ground that will create a very natural bounce board of light on your subject.
Next I will start with my setting and make sure that I do not over expose the light on the face and loose any detail. You need to find the proper angle for your subject as you don't want to have hard shadows on the subjects face. I was fortunate enough in this setup and shot to get great light on Joanna's face and also keep some detail on my outside scene. Lots of times when you shoot like this you might experience the outside being blown out and that's okay as long as your subject is lit well. As you can see my ISO was set at 1000 so it letting just enough light in and giving me a great dept of field. Now what I do next is set a very small accent light at Joanna's back. For this I used a small portable flash that was maybe 25 watts of power. I placed it off to the back right of my subject. As you can see I now have really nice highlights on Joanna's hair and if you look at the top right of the photo the back flash lit part of the wall and gave me the separation from my subject to the background. If I didn't use the back accent light the back of Joanna and the wall would have been really dark and flat. Although that is okay for this look I wanted a bit more detail and highlights.
The other thing I love using window and natural light there is always a reflection of your subject on the window if you are able to maintain good detail. You can see in this image it is very slight but for sure ads to the photo.
The fact that I really wanted to do this shoot black and white really added to the beauty and more dramatic look.
Have fun with using window light and try different windows. Once you get the idea of how it works you will want to use it more often. - Peace