The Benefits of Natural Light Photography
Today's FAQ post dives into a topic that is near and dear to my heart- natural light! Natural light is something that when used properly and understood, can drastically impact professional photographers images, but also your images that you take with your iPhone.
What is natural light?
Natural light is effectively just sunlight. No flash, no overhead lights, just plain, old sunlight. It changes names based on direction (back light, front light, side light, etc) and the quality (dappled, direct, window light, etc)
Why do you use it?
When photographers say they are 'natural-light' photographers, we mean just that. We use exclusively what the sun is providing us for our images, and while that's helpful because we don't have to bring a lot of gear around, our reasoning goes way deeper than that. Here are some of my favorite reasons why I use natural light:
Cohesive Color- If you've ever taken a photo indoors with the overhead lights turned on, but with the outdoors in your image in the background, you will notice that the indoors is an orange color, while the outdoors takes on a blue tint. That's because the light temperature (color of the light) is different from outdoors to indoors. So, when you mix artificial and natural light, without extensive editing, your colors will always look off and unnatural.
Skin Tones- Can I tell you how much a strange skin tone can ruin a photographer’s day? I have spent so many hours trying to get a red cast from a shirt, or, more often than not, an orange cast from an errant lamp on in the other room off someone's face. If you use exclusively natural light, skin tones come out beautiful and perfect almost every time.
Mood Control- Back light creates romance, front light spotlights joy and side light gives images a moody feel. Flash and overhead lights can re-create these, but it requires set-up time and with lifestyle photograph and kids moving around constantly, you don’t always get things happening where they need to in order to achieve that look.
Do you ever use artificial light? More importantly, should I ever use it?
The short answer- yes.
But, let's dive into the long one, shall we.
First of all, I always try for natural light. However, sometimes there just isn't enough light to get the image you want without it being blurry. It is rare that I take an image on my iPhone with a flash, but I do have overhead lights on at night, obviously. With my professional camera, however, it's rare that I use artificial light. I would never turn on an overhead light, because the mixture of artificial and natural would present some major issues as outlined above, but sometimes, I do have to break out a flash. Luckily, professional cameras can handle exceptionally low light, but if you are carrying a camera that can't, always go for capturing the moment if it's a really good one over the quality of the image.
Take a look at my indoor portfolio and see if you can spot the different qualities of light!
Are you a photographer looking to master natural light, especially in-home? I created an online photography class to teach photographers just that. Learn more about it here.