Natural light the best there is

Well ok, we can discuss on this topic till the cows come home (hope I got that expression correct), but although I love to use strobes I still believe that shooting with natural light can be one of the most fun things to do. If you never shoot with the available light make sure you try at least a few times during a shoot. I find that many people are so focussed onto the look they want to create with for example strobes that during the photoshoot itself they sometimes forget to also take advantage of what they already have available. And trust me sometimes you will find that those natural light shots can be the best of the whole shoot (I know I did some in between shots during sets that I actually liked more than the strobed ones).

The shots in this blogpost were all done with natural light, although I have to add that we had that beautiful soft box in the sky as our “modifier”, if you read between the lines, it was a real Dutch bad weather day, but for photographers a great day. But don’t get me wrong I also love to shoot in very harsh sunlight and get a much more contrasty look as in this image.

But back to the workshop images.
The images in this blog post from Christianne were shot during my Advanced III workshop, in this workshop it’s all focussed on shooting on location and starting off with natural light it slowly builds towards a more day to night look (which images I will post later this week). This is always an interesting workshop because it’s highly depending on the weather outside, in the winter when it’s dry for example the workshop will have a totally different outcome from the summer, and that’s what will also happen in real life of course.

There is of course also attention for simple things like playing with DOF like you can see in these last two examples. During outside sessions I see a lot of images where the photographer could have greatly improved the shot by just selecting a different angle and play a bit with the DOF. For example I love to shoot on f2.8 with the 70-200f2.8L-IS from Canon But when you place a model against a wall and shoot straight on the effect will be almost zero, however by moving your model slightly in front of the wall (as in the image above) you will immediately see a huge difference, the model pops out and the background goes out of focus creating more depth.

But also when the model is against the wall you can create a cool effect by choosing your angle as you can see in this last shot.
So try to shoot more with natural light the next time you go out, and feel free to share the images on for example my Google+ account or here.

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