If you’re a photographer, chances are you’re going to occasionally shoot in natural light. Some people love working in natural light, while others are frustrated by it. The trouble is, you don’t have full control so it’s difficult to make sure your subject is well lit. Despite these difficulties, outdoor and natural light photography can be really rewarding.
If you struggle with natural lighting, or are just looking for additional tips, here are some strategies you can use on your next shoot.
Positioning your subject
If you’re working with natural light, it means you’re working with the sun. If you’re photographing people (or any smaller subject that you can move around) one of the simplest things you can do to adjust your lighting, is to reposition your subject.
Depending on what kind of effect you’re looking for, you can position the sun in front of or behind your subject. You want to use the sun to your advantage as much as possible. This means that sometimes the best way to add more light to your photo is just to move to a different spot for your photo.
Additional lighting
If repositioning yourself or your subject isn’t much of an option, we recommend bringing additional lighting with you for your outdoor shoots. If you’re working in a small space the whole day, you might be able to bring studio quality lighting. However, if you’re on the move, bring small supplemental lighting.
There are all kinds of products like Lumecubes and strobe lights which can help you add light to your shots. Worst comes to worst you can also resort to using headlamps or flashlights with the right color temperatures to fill out the lighting on your subject.
If you’re working on portrait photography, we would also recommend bringing a reflector. Sometimes the most effective way to get more light on your subject is to bounce sunlight the direction you need it to go.
Equipment
Another strategy for working with natural light is working with different kinds of cameras and camera lenses. Depending on the situation you might need lenses that are better suited for low lighting, like wider prime (fixed) lenses with low aperture capabilities.
Ideally you want to shoot the best possible image in camera so that you have more to work with once you get to the editing room. This means we would recommend shooting raw files as often as you can, and working with your exposure and focus settings to get the best image possible.
Postproduction
You should deal with most or all of your lighting problems while you’re actually on location shooting, but you can make minor adjustments in post production. If you’re shooting on an especially bright sunny day for example, we would recommend slightly underexposing your image. You can always bump up the exposure in post, but you don’t want to blow out your images if you overexpose them in camera.
Additionally, if you come back from a shoot and you need to boost some of the shadows on someone’s face in a few photos, you can work with highlight and shadow masks to make minor adjustments on your photos. This should allow you to bring out highlights on their face (particularly their eyes) to bring viewers attention to your subject. Remember though, that you should focus on all major decisions and issues in camera while you’re shooting, and simply use the post production process as a way to refine what you already have.
Hopefully by supplementing bits of all these strategies you can adjust to taking photos with natural light and enjoy the process! We work with natural light all the time, so if you want some fun examples, check out our photography page. Additionally if you need help with your photo shoot, contact us here.