5 Benefits of Natural Light for Portraiture
Hi guys!
Sorry it’s been so long since my last blog post, I’ve been putting a tonne of effort into my YouTube Channel and subsequently a lack of attention has been on my website.
I plan on rectifying that over the next few months, catching up on all the blog posts that I should have written, as well as giving my site a general overhaul.
In the meantime, I’ll kick off my blog posts again with my latest content -
5 Benefits of Natural Light for Portraiture | Using Window Light
I recently shot a set of portraits of my friend Rebecca at my house using only window light. Following the shoot, I created a short video discussing the 5 benefits of using natural light, specifically window light for portraiture. They are as follows:
Window light creates soft directional light. Essentially what we’re doing when we use window light is modifying sunlight into a large softbox. You don’t want to use windows in direct sunlight unless on a cloudy day, but use a window on the opposite side of the building.
Natural light is modifiable. It’s easy to modify the light coming in through the window to suit your creative needs. For example, we can use a reflector to fill in shadows, a flag or gobo to block out light from certain parts of our frame or blinds as a makeshift grid.
WYSIWYG. Nope, I’ve not smashed a bunch of keys on the keyboard! WYSIWYG stands for “what you see is what you get.” When we use natural light we benefit from the fact we can see the image we’re going to get before we push that shutter button.
It’s accessible. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to shoot in a studio or a fancy location with good lighting. Fortunately, windows are literally everywhere, meaning you can take advantage of the beautiful light it creates giving you no excuse not to try it!
It’s free! Next time you’re hovering over the “buy now” button for an expensive studio strobe/trigger setup, ask yourself whether you really need it or can you make the most of the light you already have access to that doesn’t cost you a penny.
There you have it, in a nutshell, five benefits of using natural light for portraiture, specifically window light. You can watch me talk about it in a bit more detail along with some behind the scenes and images from the shoot on my YouTube video below.
See you on the next post!
Cheers,
Craig