A guide to photographing with natural light
What got me into shooting natural lighting and almost mastering it? Being poor, being unable to afford actual studio lights. I've yet to buy the perfect studio light set-up, and I don't have or own a studio. I know it's really hard to believe, but it's the truth. I use natural and parks around me for a lot of my work, if it was shot indoors, it was likely at a friend's home or against a some of my wall space.
It's not that I don't want that, or that I don't like to use studio lighting for my work, some of my stronger work has been studio lighting, but some of my favorite work has been shot outdoors.
The first thing to know. Despite what you hear, over-cast days, cloudy and moody are going to be the best to try out if you're a newbie, why is that?
The clouds still allow uv rays to break through, and technically, what it does is that it would mimic what a soft box with a diffuser can do which is making the light less harsh. Why do I shoot in parks and in nature? The sun is breaking through during days of direct sunlight - in that sense, it adds a speckle effect or can to your work, some models like the look, others don't, it depends on if you want that in your work or not, but I like shady areas sometimes because the light during direct sunlight days can be super intense if there is no cloud coverage.
Rainy days. I'll be covering more on how I shoot during those days in a later post, but you should know that if it rains, it pours, but you shouldn't let that deter you from shooting in natural lighting, sure it seems gloomy, but honestly it will give you again, amazing light to use in your work. It might even bring life and magic to your art.
I'd really like to wrap this up, as I feel it's definitely covered some of the starting points I have to share with you at this time.
If you liked this post - let me know~!
-Sarah Trickler