Recent Natural Light Articles

How to Create Beautiful Baby Portraits Using Natural Light in Your Own Garage

If you don’t have a ton of fancy lighting gear at home, this doesn’t mean that you can’t produce gorgeous studio-style images. This in-depth video tutorial shows you how to get great results using minimal equipment from the comfort of your own garage and dives deep into how they're edited in Lightroom.

What the Fog? 7 Tips for Moody Photographs

Nebulous cities, misty forests, and magic sunrays make a perfect subject for photography in the cold winter. Here, I share some tips and ideas for shooting mist and fog.

Shooting at Night With a 50mm f/0.95 Lens that Costs Only $755

Third-party manufacturers have gifted photographers with a plethora of extremely fast glass in the last couple of years and this 50mm lens might be far better than you might anticipate. Expect a weighty, manual focus lens with metal construction and some chromatic aberration — not to mention a lot of bokeh and more opportunities when shooting at night.

Forget Golden Hour, Shoot the Blue Moment

Golden hour, that time around sunrise and sunset that gives a warming orange glow, is often purported as the best time of the day for photography. But most of those people don't know the magic of the blue moment.

How to Create a Natural Light Photo Studio at Home

Artificial lighting affords you a wide variety of creative and practical options, but it is not always reasonable or feasible to use it, particularly at home. That does not mean you can't create professional portraits, though, and this fantastic video tutorial will show you how to do it.

5 Portraits You Can Create With Window Light

The beauty of portraits is just how accessible they are to photographers. If you have a camera, you can create beautiful portraits. One of the cheapest and easiest ways is using window light.

How Intentional Camera Movement Can Create Unique and Stunning Photos

Intentional camera movement is taking a photograph with a longer shutter speed and purposefully moving the camera during exposure. Most photographers swear by using a tripod for this technique, but I'm here to show you that you can do it handheld just as easily.

7 Tips To Improve Your Food Photography

If you've ever wanted to try food photography at home, then use these seven tips to improve your chances of getting some great food photos.

Capturing the Magic Moment: All You Need to Know About Photographing Rainbows

Whenever you see one, you’ll point at it, kids love to draw them, and some believe that there is a pot of gold hidden at their end. To me, photographing a rainbow is enough of a gift. Here, you’ll get to know how to increase the chance of seeing a rainbow and how to photograph and edit one.

7 Tips for Natural Light Beauty Photography

Of all the genres in photography, beauty work often has some of the most precise, intricate, and carefully sculpted lighting setups out there. Nonetheless, that does not mean you can't shoot beauty images using natural light, and that may even be preferable in certain situations. This fantastic video tutorial discusses seven tips for shooting better natural light beauty images.

Getting More Variety in Your Boudoir Photos

Take a quick look at your boudoir photos. Are you finding that a majority of your images are too similar and you are lacking variety in those shots? If so, here are a few ways you can mix things up in your shoot to add more variety to your work.

A Beginner's Guide to Exposure Compensation

Exposure compensation is a tool that every photographer ought to know how to use effectively. In this video, learn exactly how it works, when to use it, and how to use it.

5 Tips for Better Natural Light Family Portraits

When it comes to family portraiture, using natural light instead of flash is often a popular choice for several reasons. Whether you are shooting portraits of other families for money or simply trying to create your own memories, this fantastic video features five great tips for creating authentic natural light family portraits.

Review: Topaz DeNoise AI Ups the Game for Removing Noise

I took a look at Topaz DeNoise AI earlier this year and found it effective at removing noise without killing the details in your images. My only complaint was that it was not a speed demon. On some large images, I had to wait almost a minute before the image was cleaned up. Is that better in the latest version?

A Spot Metering Crash Course

Spot metering is just a camera feature that measures the exposure from a single point. However, it is often misunderstood, and utilizing spot metering correctly may widen your technical capabilities when shooting in manual mode.

Helpful Natural Light Home Studio Tips and Tricks

Most people start out their photography journey learning how to light their photos using natural light, and many photographers continue to use it for work at home, both because of its look and because it saves on space that might be tight wherever you live. If you enjoy working with natural light in your home studio, be sure to check out this great video with lots of helpful tips and tricks.

10 Photoshoot Ideas You Can Do at Home

As the economic slowdown continues, many of us may not have as much work as we'd like. Personally, I've had very few contracts come through the door in the last couple of months, and the worst thing about it as has been the lack of things to do.

A Different Experience for a Landscape Photographer: Fires at Night

I'm mainly an Arizona based golden time landscape photographer, and I also mix in Milky Way and telescope based astronomical photography of galaxies and nebulas. On June 5th, a lightning storm struck the Catalina Mountains near Tucson, and almost literally, all hell broke loose.

The Science Behind Sunrise

Why is it that we get more reds, oranges, and yellows when the sun is at the horizon at either sunrise or sunset, and how does the sky remain blue during the day anyway? Let’s look briefly at the chief principles at play when it comes to changes of color at the golden hours.

How to Take Perfect Sunset Landscapes

Why is it that certain sunsets stand out more than others? After all, it’s not every day we see a good one. Well, that depends on a few different things that must come together to produce the kind of sunsets we want to capture in camera. In this piece, I'll outline what to look for and when.

Tips And Tricks To Improve Your Outdoor Portraits

In this great video, Brandon Woelfel takes us through photographing with natural light at golden hour and dusk. Explaining his ISO, shutter speed and aperture options at every stage makes it nice and easy to grasp the secrets he's sharing.

How to Take Stunning Indoor Portraits With Just Household Items

If you are currently stuck at home and looking for something to shoot, natural light portraits are a fantastic option, especially if you do not have any strobes or monolights in your house with you. This excellent video will show you how you can use items around your house and natural lighting techniques to take stunning portraits.

How Astrid Obert Shot 'Inception' in Cape Town

As creatives, we all love opportunities to work out creativity muscles and test how far we can push it. This was how the shoot “Inception” came about for photographer Astrid Obert.

Learn How This Natural Light Beauty Image Was Shot and Edited

If you are interested in beauty photography, you might be used to complex lighting setup to produce the often intricate lighting you see in the final images. And while these sorts of multi-light setups certainly have their place, you might be surprised by just how much you can accomplish even using only natural light. This excellent video will show you how a photographer lit, shot, and edited this natural light beauty photo.

Photography YouTuber Shares First Photo Assignment to Subscribers

How are you keeping your creative juices flowing during the quarantine? Are you finding yourself in an endless loop of switching between social media apps, convincing yourself to do work, only to be left in front of the fridge for unnecessary snacking? Keep your skills sharp with some photography challenges! Ted Forbes of The Art of Photography posed the first part of many photography challenges to his 600k+ subscribers during the quarantine.

How to Take Stunning Pet Portraits at Home

Take simple pet portraits at home while you’re self-isolating. All you need is a pet, a window, and some pet treats to grab their attention, then set your camera to aperture priority mode and work on your composition.

Better Environmental Portraits with Luminar 4

Creating dynamic and interesting images in a time crunch situation sometimes means you’ll have to finish your images in post to develop the most iconic and exciting imagery for yourself or a client. This has usually meant a good amount of time spent in Photoshop to extract and then blend your foreground and subject with your sky. In this video you will get to see how Luminar 4 can save you time and help you create an epic back-lit environmental portrait.

ProCamera Is Still the iOS Photo App to Beat

I've been looking at photo apps for the iPhone since the phone was first released in 2007. From the start, it was pretty clear Apple wasn't getting the most out of their own camera with the built-in app, and third parties rushed in. If you wanted to take serious photos, many of the apps were wanting, offering stickers and other features most pros would disdain. But not this app.

Six Simple Tips for Shooting Moody Photographs Using Natural Light

Despite Instagram being dominated by beautiful, airy, bokeh ball-laden images of people looking happy, sometimes you just want to create something a bit darker. In this short video, Mango Street give you some basic tips for shooting indoors using natural light to achieve a moodier, more somber look to your photographs.

Three Great Tips for Shooting Boudoir Photographs Using Natural Light

While a ton of strobes and modifiers might be ideal for creating striking shots, it’s often best to shoot boudoir imagery using natural light to make things flow and keep your model at ease. Experienced boudoir photographer Michael Sasser offers three great tips for using natural light to capture stunning images.

Helpful Tips for Better Natural Light Portraits

Many photographers love to shoot natural light portraits for a variety of reasons, and with them come their own sets of challenges. This awesome video will give lots of tips to shoot better and more creative natural light portraits.

3 Ways to Control Natural Light for Portraits

I usually use natural light as my go-to for quick group photos or for portraits that need to be done very quickly or with very little gear. That doesn’t mean you can’t shape or control natural light to create studio quality images wherever you are. Here’s three easy ways to shape natural light for your next portrait shoot.

Three Options for Natural Light Boudoir Setups

Michael Sasser has shared what he calls his most valuable video on his channel to date. Working with 100 percent natural light, he decided to make this video to help other boudoir photographers understand the importance of lighting.

How I Shot This Model in Just Fifteen Minutes

Sometimes it’s fun to set yourself a challenge, maybe shooting with limited gear or with a very quick turnaround. On this occasion, I had no choice. The shoot was conceived and captured in under fifteen minutes, and the images were edited and submitted less than half an hour later. Here’s how it came about.

How I Shot These Rooftop Fashion Images

I shot these images for fashion ecommerce store Zilingo when we were doing a recent campaign/catalog shoot. What a fun team to shoot with! They really have a vision for what they want to pull off and are very supportive in terms of getting there.

Five Essentials for Getting Started in Portrait Photography

Are you thinking of trying out portrait photography and want to get some insight as to exactly what you need to create beautiful portraits without a lot of trial and error? Read on for some tried and true suggestions that will get you started without all the hit-and-miss experimentation.