HOW TO SHOOT NATURAL LIGHT PHOTOGRAPHS IN A STUDIO
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One of the great advantages of having a west facing window in my studio is the gorgeous afternoon and evening natural light that streams in. It’s winter now, but even during this season, I can still get some wonderful light. Despite having a full studio lighting setup with both continuous and strobe lights, I do love the options of shooting with the natural light. In the morning or middle of the day, when the sun isn’t on my side of the building, I don’t tend to get a lot of direct sunlight - instead, the light coming in is diffused and softer because its bouncing off the sky and clouds to enter my studio. With this we can achieve a lovely soft, wrap around light that doesn’t produce too hard shadows. See this shot of Polly below. In this instance, as in most instances, I will use a big reflector board - made from a big sheet of insulation from a hardware store, painted white on one side and black on the other - this reflector just opens up the shadows, preventing detail loss and giving it a bit of life. I like being able to have a bit more control of the shadows, rather than just letting them go to black or too dark and the reflector is perfect for this.
When the sun gets past a certain point in the sky, it makes an appearance in the studio and the results can be amazing. Some photographers tell you to never shoot in direct sunlight, its too small and hard a light source. Remember that the smaller a light source is, the harder the light will be on the subject, creating harder edges to the shadows, so the sun, which is quite a distance away, is a very small light source. Now, this small, hard light is accompanied by a larger softer light that is just the reflected, ambient light from the sky, so, it’s sort of like a combo - two for one. But as you can see in the examples below, the direct light produces hard edged shadows. Again, I usually want to open up these shadows with a reflector. Sometimes I might also add in a continuous LED light, often with a CTO gel to match the temperature of the sunlight. In some of these shots I use a prism on the edge of the frame to cast a glow across the frame , as though the light is spreading across the image.
I love low evening sunlight in the studio and I’ve had some amazing, fleeting experiences with this kind of light - check out my shots of Edna. It can give a wonderful glow to everything and throws all sorts of accidental elements into the mix. The joy of working with natural light in this way is you get results you can’t plan for. These little accidents really add to photography - being able to always control everything makes working with this medium much more mundane, so allowing natural light into your images can add that little extra spice.
© Tom Trevatt www.tomtrevatt.com/blog/how-to-shoot-headshots-with-natural-light-in-a-studio
