People usually think that a bright sunny day is great for photography. In general, people get over-excited when they see blue skies. They think it is the perfect time to take the camera out and start taking pictures.
But in reality experienced portrait photographers know, depending on how and when we use the sun, natural light can be a portrait photographer’s biggest blessing or a nightmare.
Light from sun manifests in many forms. For example:
- hard to soft,
- diffused to bright
To master how and why you use the light comes with experience
along with constant experimentation.
There are many ways you can use natural light. It can be used alone or in combination with flash to create a wide variety of subtle or striking effects that completely change the look of a portrait or scene.
In this article, I will explain how I use different lighting conditions when taking pictures using natural light and at the same time ways to create dramatic and beautiful photos. I will give you my finest step by step tips.
Always be adaptable
You can’t predict the weather so it is important to always plan for the worst weather and use your perfect skills to create perfect photos in any light conditions. Every professional photographer needs to use his skills to adapt to always changing the weather. A professional photographer can get great results in any type of weather.
Taking pictures in the shade
You can use the natural shade of the trees to avoid hard direct light from the subject. Hard direct light of the sun is usually not favored in photography. Using the natural shades you get much better results. Exposure is set to balance the subject with the background and it will not be over or underexposed. At the same time, you get an interesting effect.
Using diffused light in photography
When we use diffused light we get a perfect balance of light in the subject and in background. There is little difference in exposure between the person we photograph and the background.
Exposing for a soft of hard light sends the background into darkness and beautiful effect in our photo. This effect is also perfect for shooting all kind of jewelry when we want to keep the background dark.
Shooting in darkness and playing with lines
Here in our country it often rains. We are used of sudden rain that can happen anytime. But in general, the weather is always sunny. The sun is usually very strong and that is why it is better to take photographs in the afternoon or morning.
On the other hand, we have many wet days with no sun.
The weather is super unpredictable and we rarely know what’s gonna happen the same day. It is very important that we as a portrait photographer are full of ideas of how to use varying conditions – anything from direct strong sunlight with no shade, too dark and overcast weather
– and the ability to be flexible in these weather conditions and adapt our techniques and also to seek out and create the lighting conditions we want.
From my experience light has to categories
- hard light
- and direct light.
Hard light can be seen in a typical sunny hot day with no clouds. We get hard shadows and it’s impossible to open our eyes and look towards the sky. The sun is too bright.
On the other hand, we have a diffused type of light where the sun direct light is partially or fully covered with clouds.
Both types of light have many various states depending on the time of the day and the environment in which we are shooting. When you take real estate photos, the buildings and the trees can create shadows and diffuse the light. If we photograph interior spaces, models, jewelry the sun is completely eliminated.
In both situations, we can take great pictures and use natural light or a combination of natural light and flash to create dramatic effects, manipulate shadows and highlights. The goal is to get a perfectly balanced light. With the perfect set up the raw images require less retouching. This is especially true for jewelry retouching.
Top 10 strategies when shooting with difficult light
Difficult Light Shoot Tip 1
Use the light reflector to disperse the light. Reflectors these days are very cheap and are a great alternative to photo flash. Photography reflectors can be a great source of light when we don’t have enough natural light.
Difficult Light Shoot Tip 2
Reflect the light with the tools that you have at hand. You don’t have to buy a super expensive reflector. You can use a white or silver surface that will help you disperse, reflect the light back to your subject. This is perfect for shooting jewelry when you need to create an even light around the subject.
Difficult Light Shoot Tip 3
Prepare for the weather change. Getting the perfect natural light is many times difficult. The weather changes constantly. You cannot compare the natural weather to the studio lighting set up that can be manually adjusted. With natural weather, natural light you never get the same condition to shoot.
Difficult Light Shoot Tip 4
if you are shooting outside, always avoid the midday sun. As a rule, you should avoid taking pictures because the midday sun emits a light that is too harsh and too high in the sky making it difficult to have some kind of control over it
Difficult Light Shoot Tip 5
If you shooting in natural light only I suggest facing your subject into the sun. It doesn’t matter if the light is hard or soft as this will further illuminate the face.
Difficult Light Shoot Tip 6
Always be creative with light. Even if the lighting conditions are not perfect you can still get amazing photos. Be creative, try different techniques, use the light that you have. When you see the works of professional photographers, they sometimes shoot in a bad light too. But they still get amazing photos.
Difficult Light Shoot Tip 7
When you are faced with hard light expose it. Especially where it is only a shard, expose your camera for the highlights and not for the shadows.
Difficult Light Shoot Tip 8
use diffused flash to your surroundings. When you diffuse the light from the flash you get natural looking light. This is the perfect time to use a softbox and feather the light around from the direction of natural light will help you blend it to look realistic when adding flash to natural light. Softboxes are often used in studios for jewelry photography, model photography.
Difficult Light Shoot Tip 9
Work fast. Natural light often changes very fast so you have to be prepared to take pictures quick, within hours or minutes. The perfect weather conditions might not last long.
Difficult Light Shoot Tip 10
Plan in advance. Every photographer needs to be prepared for any change of weather. We need to predict the perfect time of the day to get the ultimate lightning conditions. Also planning the location of the shoot is also important.
