Transcripts
1. Introduction to Natural Light Portraits: Good, I welcome to our class on natural light portraits. Good. I, one inch Warren Marshall. And this class is about natural light portraits. Using natural light to photograph portraits can be a wonderful thing. The advantage of shooting in natural light is that it looks natural. Now brain loves natural light portraits because when we look at, it looks like something that would occur in nature. There's no artificiality about at all the light looks right to us. Now, there are a lot of advantages with shooting with natural light. One of the major ones is that you don't have to carry any extra deal with you. All you need is your camera. So using the light that's available has a big advantage straightaway. During daylight, natural light is everywhere. So we can go at, at any time of day that suits us and use the light that's available there. Now the problem with natural light is that it's not always ideal when we're shooting portraits, particularly when looking for light that's going to work nicely with they're subject to give a nice flattering result. We're looking for a light that's going to work well to lighthouse subjects eyes. Because if we can't see our subjects eyes, we can't see their personality. So we tend to look for light that's coming from a reasonably low angle. Light is coming from too far above lock we might have at midday or, or in the middle of the day, tends to give us dark eyes because light coming from above means that our eyebrows are shading arrows and our eyes are in shadow. So that's why we get dark eyes in the middle of the day, we need some light that's going to be a little bit lower to throw that nicely into our subjects eyes so that we can see them. That's one of the problems that we might have. So being able to manipulate natural light or recognize good natural light is a big part of what we do as natural light photographers. I'm going to teach you in this class. I'm going to teach you how to recognize good law. It had a manipulate good light, how to use light at any time of day, depending on the situation in a particular way, this kind of work where we just subject, we're going to shoot natural light shots indoors. We're going to shoot natural light shots up doors. You'll see a video of a shoot that I've done with a model page that will show you the way that I used natural light and the various different options that we have when we use natural light, both indoors and outdoors. This class will lift your natural light photography up to a new level. A lot of the principles you can apply to other genres of photography. We're going to concentrate mostly on portraits because that's what I do most often. And you'll also see over a 100 of my natural light portraits that I've taken, various different situations. Some in sunlight summing shade, some indoors, outdoors. So you'll be able to learn from all of those. Have a look at them. Try and analyze how the light works with our subject. Have looked at their eyes, make sure that we can see those eyes, that, that light coming from a low enough angle. I'll also give you a lot of tips about situations around your home where you can find great natural light to shoot portraits. It's not a difficult thing. So please join us in this course, and I'm sure you'll have fun and learn how to shoot some great images.
2. Working with Natural Light: Now taking portraits in natural light seems like an easy thing to do. Natural lights everywhere we can use it whenever we want. It's not as easy as you may think to produce a good quality natural light portrait. There are a lot of things you need to think about when we take a portrait. We need to think about air exposure, composition. Now, launching, we need to think about positioning our person. We need to think about other things in the landscape, backgrounds and things. So there's a lot of things you need to think about when we're shooting natural I portraits. One of the most important things is the locking itself. Now I'm going to teach you how to manipulate that Laudato header, recognize the light so that it works with your portrait. There are a few basic characteristics of light that we need to understand as photographers, because light is a crucial thing to us as photographers because all the photograph is, is light reflecting off things. So if we understand how to use light, then we can produce so much better results. Now the four characteristics that we usually talk about when we're talking about light. The quality of the light, the intensity of the light, the direction, and the color of the light. We're gonna go through a few of these in this lesson, just so that you'll be a little bit more knowledgeable about using light in the right way. Now, the quality of the light, we talk about, the hardness or the softness of light. Soft light tends to come from a large light source. Hardline tends to come from a small light source. So the Ultimate Hard Light Source is the sun. The sun is very small in relation to us. It throws very distinct shadows onto our subject. It throws high-contrast light, really bright whites, really dark blacks. So it tends to be fairly difficult to use when we're talking about portraits and often is not a flattering light to use. Whereas if we have an overcast day, we're still using sunlight. But that bright sun, that small light source has been diffused by that layer of cloud. The sun is launching that layer of cloud. The cloud diffuses the light so that it comes from multiple directions. It doesn't cast hard shadows. We can hardly see the shadows on our subjects. It is very flattering to our subject because that light wraps around their subject and doesn't throw those hard shadows on air subject. It still comes from above, which is a little bit of a problem when we talk about portraits. But soft light is light that comes from a large light source. That's why when we artificially lidar subjects, when we're shooting in the studio or when we're using artificial light such as flash, we tend to try and use larger light sources such as soft boxes or umbrellas. So using a large light sources, the first step to a flattering portrait. Now we're going to talk about the direction of the light. As I mentioned earlier, light comes from above tends to give us dark eyes because our eyes are recessed into our skull, our eyebrows are there to protect their eyes. So that throws a shadow over arise if I launch coming from above lock it is in most outdoor situations, then we get those dark eyes. Now, there are a few ways that we can solve this problem. Obviously, one of them is to go at litre or earlier in the day when the sun is not at that high angle. Which can work quite well, except if we're using that sunlight to lie to our subject, then we're going to get those fairly hard shadows because it's a small light source. One of my favorite ways to use natural light outdoors is to use open shade. Open shade is a situation where we've got the light blocked from above, but we have nice soft light coming in onto our subject. So one situation might be under the canopy of a tree. We get under the shade of a tree. The canopy of the tree above us is blocking most of that light that's coming down from above, but it's allowing nice soft light to come in underneath that canopy. We don't want sunlight coming in underneath because we don't want that hard light. We want nice soft light from that sky light that's coming in underneath. It's a really nice soft light. It's coming in at a low angle, so it's going to lie to her subjects face really nicely and show us those eyes. And other situation would be a veranda or some sort of outdoor situation where you've got a roof above. That roof stops the light coming down from above, but allows nice soft light to come in underneath. So if you have a pagoda or a veranda or some sort of outdoor structure that is open at the sides. That's a beautiful light source to use for your portraits. Another great wine is window light. If we place our subject indoors next to a window, we've got that large light source from the window, throwing nice soft light in onto our subject. Again, we don't want the sunlight coming through that window to get that hard light. We want the sun on the other side of the house. So in the northern hemisphere, you might use a north-facing window. In the southern hemisphere, we would use a south facing window or just wait until the sun's not on that window. And you'll see in the shoot that comes later in this class. We placed our model next to a large window to give us that really nice soft light and it works beautifully. Another great situation to use open shade is in a garage. When you put up your garage door, you've got a large three meter by three meter soft light source. We don't want the sun coming through there. Who want the Sun on the other side of the house. But that big three meters soft light is very flattering light to shoot with. So there's a number of different situations around your home that you can use this nice natural light. Now, if we do have to shoot in bright sunlight, there's a couple of things that we can do. So say we're shooting in the middle of a park. There are no trees or no trees that are suitable. We can shoot in bright sunlight. All we need to do is to turn our subject away from the Sun. So we don't want our subject facing the sun because we're going to get very harsh light on their face. They're going to be squinting because they're looking towards the Sun. It's not going to be a great situation at all. So simply turn your subject around away from the sun, which means the Sun is on the back of their body. You get a noise highlight effect around their hair and their clothing from that light coming from the back. But they lit by that very nice soft light coming from the sky on the other side of the sky. So it's a very nice, soft, flattering light to use. It's a little bit more of a difficult situation because you asked shooting towards the sun. So you need to be careful of a couple of things. It's best if you can shoot them against the Dhaka backgrounds. So try and shoot them against some shaded trees. So that background is reasonably DAC, which will accentuate that beautiful rim lighting around their bodies and they hear. The other situation that you need to be careful of is when that sunlight's hitting the front of your lens. If you're shooting towards the sun, you're going to get that sunlight hitting the front of your lens, which is going to give you lens flare. So simply move into the shade. If you can move into the shade or have somebody shied your lens, you're not gonna get that lens flare. You're gonna get that beautiful light on your subject. And all it's going to be well. So there are a number of different ways that we can manipulate natural light to suit our purposes so that we can get beautiful portraits outdoors. And we don't have the situation where we have to carry lights with ascend and set up lights and worry about flash exposures and things like that. So if you understand a little bit about line, you can do amazing things with your photography. The more you understand about light, the better equipped you are to produce amazing photographs.
3. Indoor Natural Light Shoot with Paige: We're here inside, inside a house. We're going to use available light using the windows in this house. We've got a great location here because you've got plenty of light coming in. We've got these big picture windows, and we can control the light on our subject by just changing these blinds around so that we can narrow our light or we can broaden airline. So that's what we're gonna do at the moment. I'm going to take a shot of page the way she is here. And then I'm going to modify it to suit the purposes of getting a better shot. So hydrogen has just want you to turn your face out there. Yeah, lovely. Okay. Just focus. And here we go. Okay, lovely. Now you can see in that shot that the background is very bright. It tends to take attention away from page because she's a little bit darker than the background. So I'm going to pull the blinds across behind her and just use this narrow lot coming in from pages right-hand sought. So what we're looking for here is a nice soft light coming through that window. That's going to light page in a nice soft light. Why? We've got a large window here that's allowing us to do that. We can vary how large that lot sources by moving these blinds forwards or backwards and changed the direction of the light on pages face to a certain degree. So when page just tens of face up to the window here, we've got most of this light coming at about three quarters onto her face, which is going to lie to her face nicely in a sort of a Rembrandt lighting style. As we close these blinds up, the lights kinda be a little bit more radical, a little bit more side lit on two pages face. So we'll do a shot like this, and then we'll move those blinds in a little bit more to narrow down the Latino. Okay. That's it. Age. Lovely. Now once you looking at me, there's Tanya. That's it. Okay. Here we go. All right. Now you can see the difference with the first shot. We haven't got that bright baccalaureate in here. The light on page looks much more noticeable because it's coming in from camera left. Now we're going to move these blinds in a little bit closer to narrow down that light. And only my blind whisper again. We've narrowed that down now by pulling these blinds in a little bit closer to page. So the light we get on her face is still going to be soft, but it's just going to be a little bit narrower. So it's gonna be a little bit more radical life. We're going to turn pages face a little bit more to the side. Yep. That's it. Can you still turn your ostomy? Yep. Chin down just a little. Yeah. Okay. Lovely. Just focusing. Here we go. Okay. Now, because that light is a little bit narrower, I've also had to increase my exposure. So I've opened my aperture up a little bit. I'm shooting on, at the moment. I'm shooting on 400 ISO 125th of a second at F5.6 psi because that's a bit narrower. There's a little bit less light coming in, so I just had to compensate a little bit. So this slide is really flattering light to shoot with. The idea is that to stand as a photographer, stand next to the window and shoot along the line of the window rather than stand back here in the room. Because if I do this, that lots going to be. And on the front of pages face and I'm going to be shooting the back of her head. So standing over he next to the window allows that really nice soft light to come through on the page. Now we've changed position with Move page next to a full length jaw. She's standing up. We're going to get that light coming through the door onto page again, a nice soft light, not quite as high as the other light was, say the lights kinda becoming in a little bit of a lower angle, but it's going to light pages face in a way that's going to be really good. We need to get paged to come around the edge of the blind little bit so that we can get that light coming onto her face. Perfect. And we've got the blind on the back window closed, so we've got a nice and darker plain background tissue page against i k. So that's the page. Just yell, nice. Here we go. Okay. I just looking out the window at he For me. Yep. That's it. That's great. I'll just move in for a little bit of a closer shot tenure face this way. A little bit more nice to me. Yeah, that's it. Okay. That looks terrific. Now you notice that the light is a little bit warm and it's probably because we've got a lot of warm colored surfaces around this area. The light reflecting off a lot of those areas, and it's just giving us a warm color. We can correct that later on in post-production if we want to, but it looks quite attractive. They have that little bit of warm light. The other thing that we need to think about here is the windows tinted. So there's an actual color embedded in the glass that's going to give you a little bit more of a tint. So we've got a we've got to take that into consideration as well. We get a the corrected when we shoot it or we can correct it later on in post-production. And I'm gonna do a little bit wider shot of page now, just moving back, zooming back a little bit so that I get a more of a three-quarter length shock. Ok. So like maybe thumb in your pocket or something? Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Right. So Tahitian towards them wind up yeah. Lovely. Focusing. Here we go. Lovely. And one more. Yeah. Okay. Terrific. Yeah, histograms looking great. We've got everything fine. It's a similar exposure to the previous shot that we did with the large window. So we don't really need to change your settings a great deal as we go through these shots. As long as pages relatively close to the window, lighting is going to be fairly similar. If she moved further back away from the window. We know because of that inverse square law, the further away from the window she gets, the darker she's going to be. So we need to compensate for that with their exposure. But the closer she is to the window also, the larger and softer the light source is going to be. Ouch. Now, now we've moved to a different situation than another room in the house or in the kitchen. Now, we're using the back door to light page. We're going to have page against the back door and have the open door have the light come through onto her. So it's a different shape light again, it's a full length like we do have a screen door here that's going to block a little bit of that light because any sort of screen is going to block the light, the amount of light that we get through that door. So I've adjusted my exposure to correct that exposure from that from that lesser light. We're going to do that and then we're going to open the door and show you the difference in the light that we get by having that open door. So any situation in the house like this, you can use a doorway, you can use a window. Any sort of situation is going to provide beautiful available light for you. Okay. Page can we stand with the back against that dual? Yeah. And just two-phase at 2a, maybe get you back that way a little bit more just so I can get it but don't get the doorway and a shock. Oblique just turn the face a little bit. Yeah, that's it. Chin Dan, a little. Lovely. Ok, here we go. Now they can see that beautiful light coming through there. We have got a bit of a reflection. The door because it's it's a glossy paint, but it doesn't detract from the image at all. Now we're going to get Scott, wonderful, beautiful assistant outside. He's going to open the door. And that's going to show you how much more light we get from that situation. So no screen blocking the light. Now, we've got that door open. Same sort of pose page, please. Just turner. Okay. Now I'm not adjusting my exposure here at all. I'm just going to shoot it. Here we go. Lovely. And you can see the different amount of light in that shot. I'm going to just adjust my shutter speed down a little bit so that it's going to give me a better exposure. I'm going to move from 160th of a second up to a 100th of a second. Ok. We go. Right? Yeah. Lovely. Just turn your face to look at the door. Yeah. That's it. Just going to move in a bit closer. Ok. Alright. Terrific. So you can see anywhere in your house, as long as you've got light coming through that window, you can shoot some beautiful available light portraits. We don't want the sunlight coming through those doors are those windows. The Sun at the moment is over the other side of the house. So you've got that nice skylight coming in, not soft light that's going to be flattering without the direct sunlight.
4. Natural light outdoors with Paige: Okay, so we're in an outdoor location now where at a local park were doing available light portraits. So we've got to take advantage of the light that's available to us at the location. Now, the major thing that we're looking for when we're doing these available, like portrait is soft light. We don't particularly want that sunlight to be lighting our subject. We want the nice soft light coming in from the Blue Sky rather than that bright sun. Nowhere where here at the worst time of day to be doing available like shots were here pretty much close to mid day. The sun's fairly high in the sky. So we've got to cope with that by looking for a situation where most of the light is blocked from above, we want to find a situation where we've got nice soft light coming in at a reasonably low angle so that it's going to light pages eyes nicely. This thing so much easier when you're shooting with a full-frame camera because you've got more information in that file to draw information out of those shadows. But with IPS sensor, like we've mostly shoe with and I shared with, we have to be a little bit more careful with the lighting that we use. So I'm looking for this situation. We've got nice soft light coming in at a life nice low angle. And we're going to take a couple of shots of page in this way and you'll see how the light works on her face. Ok, pages wanting to turn you face this way. Yeah, that's lovely. Focusing. Here we go. Yep. My way. Okay, that's great. I'll do a horizontal shot. So maybe just looking at it that way for me. That's it. Yeah. Okay. That light looks terrific because you've got a large light source coming in onto page. At the moment, we've got plenty of light and get a nice blue sky. So I'm shooting, I'm shooting at about 1 100th of a second at F8 on 400 ISO. And I've got plenty of light there to use that exposure. Okay, now we're going to move page around a little bit. We're going to just change her position in relation to this tree. We're still going to be using that nice soft light coming through here. So Paige, could you stand up for me and just move around that side of the tree? Just find a spot that works well, just about there if you can. And now it's not easy standing there. That's okay. That's great. Now we've changed pages position. We've got his standing up next to the tree. We're still using that same light that's coming in. Nice and soft from lot, from nice and download. So we're gonna take a couple of shots of page in this position and see what we get from here. So again page I want you to turn your face towards that light. Yeah, that's it. Focusing. Here we go. Lovely. Just chin down a little bit for me. Yep. Good. Okay. Terrific. Beautiful, light, similar blight there. What you would use in the studio here had a large soft box, but we're taking advantage of this available light at the location that we're in. Now we've moved to a different situation altogether. Now we're in defiled shade, which means that we've got sunlight coming down through the canopy of the tree. Now a lot of people get confused about what to do when they're in dabbled shade. I'm going to show you a shot, how not to do it. And then I'm going to show you the correct way to work with dabbled shape. So just move forward a little bit for me, paycheck, just there's great. So you'll notice in this shot, I just gotta move to the side to get rid of the garbage bin in the background. Just gonna take a shorter page here. Okay. Alright, lovely one wharf. Yep. You can see that light on pages face. It's very uneven. We've got Sunlight, we've got shade. So the way to get around this, the easy way to use dabbled shade is to simply turn around and shoot the other way should with the sun behind your model or your client, rather than have the sun in front of it. Now, even though the sun is high in the sky, because of the latitude that we're at here in Australia, it doesn't get right to the overhead. It's a little bit off to the north. So all we need to do is face our model to the south. And we got that backlight on her here. We've got nice even light on her face and it's going to work so much better. So we'll do that now. So what we've done here is we've turned to a 180 degrees will turn page so that her back is to the sunlight. And I'm shooting her this way because you've got nice soft light on the front of her face. So I'll take a shot here and you'll see the difference. Okay, here we go. Alright, that's a much better. It looks so much more attractive on page
5. Project and Wrap up: In conclusion, I hope you have learned a little bit about shooting natural light portraits. I hope I have whetted your appetite to learn more about light and how light works and how we can use light to manipulate our images. Natural light isn't amazing lot to use. We just need to learn how to use it properly. Shooting with natural light is one of the skills that we can use as photographers to tell the story of our images and to be creative and to produce images that people will really love. Your project in this class is to upload and natural light portrait. Use the principles that we've explained in this class. Prepare for your shoe. Make sure you go at the right time of day. Use the right situation. Think about your background. Think about your lighting. Think about how the light falling on your subject. All of these things will have a bearing on the results that you get. I'll give you some feedback on your images if you like. If you want to ask them questions, do so in the discussion section. Shooting in natural light can give you amazing results. Understand the light, shoot when you can, and have fun. I'll see you in the next class.
Warren Marshall, Passionate Photographer
