Video: Photographing Kids: Photography & Natural Light

Learn why natural light is important to photographing kids in this free video lesson on child photography.

Video Transcript

Today I am going to talk to you a little bit about photography in natural light. Now, photography basically is capturing light reflecting off of objects and people and things. So, when you are taking a picture you need to really consider what is your light source, where is it coming from, how is it landing on your subject and what kind of results is that giving you? Something that you might want to keep in mind is if it is going to be a sunny day, things that you might need to prepare for versus a nice cloudy day. So most of what I shoot is natural light and I try to use different things to control that light. Since I don't have studio lights to set up, I bring items with me like reflectors to sort of balance the light back into the picture and fill in things like if it is a bright sunny day and there is a lot of shadows on the person's face, I might place the reflector underneath their face to kind of fill in and balance in the light. And you can do that too with all kinds of household objects which I will get into in a moment. Okay, so let's just say that you are going down to the beach; your location plays a big role in the kind of pictures that you are going to be able to take and the things that you might need to take an okay picture and do an excellent amazing photograph of a child. So if you are down at the beach, it is pretty likely that midday is going to strike and the sun is going to be right over head and you are going to get these; I call them kind of the Frankenstein's shadows under your eyes or under your nose. So you might take your beach towel or here for example I have got just a sheet; you know how you might throw a sheet out on the beach? You can use that to sort of fill in those shadows on a person's face and get a really excellent picture. So now you have got this wonderful beach background, the person's eyes and face are all lit up and you got a wonderful composition. But let's just say you are not going to the beach and you are going over to your friend's house or for example I get hired out to go out to a lot of different locations and people's houses, so I always ask a lot of questions before I go. Like do you have a nice doorway? What kind of day am I going to be there? Is it going to be in the morning? What side of the house is the sun on in the morning versus the afternoon? It really is going to effect what my options are. Is there some room around the windows so that I can maneuver the subject with the light? Will I have room to have someone else hold up the reflector? I try to plan for these things ahead of time, so I've got a couple of options and I can really take advantage of that person's home and pictures that I can get back in my studio anywhere and you can do that too. Another thing to consider with time of day is though we have this sweet spot with natural lightening that a lot of people refer to it as the golden hour. Now this is usually right away in the morning or right before the sun goes down. The reason being is the sun is getting more defused through the atmosphere and it usually picks up kind of a warm golden tone which is fantastic for most peoples skin tones. You get rid of those harsh shadows that often occur at high noon and there's often a twinkle that is caught in a child's eye or the shadows are sort of long and you get this nice soft defused light that is just beautiful. So if you have the opportunity, try to go to your location in the morning just a little bit after sunrise or a little bit before sunset and you will really get some amazing photographs.

Photographing Kids: Photography & Natural Light

Comments

Related Ads

Related Articles & Videos