How to shoot portraits in natural light well explained with amazing examples

As we all know shooting portraits is one of the stiff & daunting tasks for any photographer but it may really ease out once you start to find the ground in this genre of photography.

Portrait Photography is always interesting for the diversities it can offer and the surprising elements which are expelled while shooting fellow humans. Most importantly, lighting is the essential element to prioritize here because a beautiful model with a bad light will still be called as a bad picture.

In this interesting tutorial of ours, I wanted to share some important aspects while considering to shoot portraits in natural light without any artificial interference.

Photo Credit: Jimmy O’Donnell

Quality of Light

Quality of light is the foremost in determining the final look and mood of a photograph. It could well be the morning sunlight which is always on the rise or the evening light which is dying. This totally depends on the photographer but I would prefer evening light for a portrait shoot because of the dying light. Take care of the highlights and shadows, not many would prefer to have sharp shadows falling all over the face. When on a broad day light, shooting in shades is the wise decision.

Photo Credit: Marc Ducrest

Photo Credit: Lana Körner

Direction

Always try to have light at the back of you while you don’t want to complicate the portrait shoot, also watch out for the shadows. Try to avoid those unpleasant darks and while you can start to play creative with gaining some deliberate sharp shadows on your model. Shooting back-lit portraits will never disappoint any for the luxuriance it has got to offer, try using a reflector to get a minimum of bounce on the face. Direction of light and your camera position determines a good picture, do try out various angles before getting fixed with that one simple winning perspective.

Photo Credit: Anastasia Volkova

Photo Credit: Jason X2

Drama

Shooting in natural light is definitely challenging than portraying your model inside a studio because you the photographer don’t have any controls over the direction, quality, color and intensity of the light. In outdoors, You need to be really proactive in making use of the wonderful light available at that particular time because the natural light is on the rise or dying depending on the time of shoot. Plan for some interesting shadow play, back-lit drama, rim light or even silhouette’s for an rewarding session.

Photo Credit: Marley C. Cumbee

Photo Credit: Sarah Lawrie

Final Processing

Once done with the shoot, and if you have shot RAW you will have enough controls over the hue, intensity, exposure controls for the pictures you have shot. This will help you enhance the final quality of the photograph and help you reap the best reward out of the picture you have shot. And do remember, it is always better to shoot an exposure down rather than shooting some over exposed photographs. Because you can always bump up the exposure compared to killing the highlights which will be a very painful task.

Photo Credit: Fox Harvard