Natural Light Photography

There are photographers that are so masterful in their creation of images that they are worth studying in the hope you can siphon off some of their brilliance. In this video, watch as some of Joel Meyerowitz's legendary street photography is broken down and analyzed. 

We call this the "environmental shutter drag portrait." A shutter drag portrait is a portrait that uses slow shutter speeds to capture the motion around the subject. This technique is best done in a big grand scene full of action and detail.

Developing your eye for how natural light can shape your composition comes with time. Contemporary landscape photographer Kyle McDougall has put together five excellent nuggets of knowledge to take with you the next time you’re out shooting. 

If you’re a wedding or event photographer, it’s likely you’ve come across mixed lighting situations, and understanding how to work with or around it is crucial. If done right, mixed lighting can have a flattering effect and can add visual interest and depth to your photos. 

Landscape photography during the summer months can lead to a motivational slump due to the weather conditions. Bright sunshine, clear blue skies, long daylight hours, and busy locations can often lead to a drop in productivity and creativity for the landscape photographer. 

Handmade selling is on the rise and with it comes an increasing number of new product photographers. Quality product photography is essential for marketing your goods, but it doesn't need to be expensive or overly technical. In fact, there are some easy things that you can adjust that will help elevate your product photographs to the next level!

Natural light is popular and has been divisive at times, but when used properly, it can lead to some beautiful images. Here are six tips to help you take better portraits without artificial light. 

Those of us in the Northern Hemisphere are now in the throes of summer, which means harsh sunshine for a larger part of the day. While midday sun is generally not ideal for photographs, it isn't always avoidable. Luckily, there are some simple ways to work around and even with that blazing star and still end up with strong images. 

As portrait photographers, we dream of great models, great light, and a great location. Well, this shoot quite comfortably has all three in abundance and required a helicopter to get there. 

Backlighting, when understood and controlled correctly, can produce amazing results in portrait photography. Many of you may already know this, but have you tried it with your pets? 

Go behind the scenes on a professional portrait shoot at the most picturesque time of the day to see how these stunning images were created. 

Landscape photography is hardly of any benefit to society, nature, or the world in general. For most people, the commercial value is quite low as well. So why would you do it?

Do you want to become a better wildlife photographer but you aren’t sure where to start? Here are five tips to help you create beautiful animal photographs no matter your skill level. 

Photographing when the sun is at its highest point in the sky is rarely desirable, but there are certainly times and places where it can make for great images. Here are some tips for that less popular time of day. 

Portrait photographers generally use artificial light whenever they are working indoors, but window light can be a fantastic source of flattering natural light suitable for a portrait. This excellent video tutorial will show you how to set up and take a compelling portrait using window light and a reflector.  

Fast glass is more affordable than ever before, with brands pushing quality and lowering prices to attract photographers away from the big names. But how good are they? 

When you buy new (or used) lenses, they almost always come with a lens hood that you can attach to the end of the lens. They serve various purposes but do you really need to use them?

There are a bunch of different ways to make your photos stand out: great light, gorgeous model, amazing locations, idealized retouching, but one that is often overlooked in favor of these less subtle approaches is color.  We photographers tend to schedule a shoot, show up, capture what's there, and pat ourselves on the back for our genius, but what goes into the shoot before we schedu

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. 

Have you ever taken a photo of a sunset and been disappointed at what it looks like on the camera? Well, follow along for some expert editing tips to transform them into gold. 

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.

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. 

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. 

Nail white balance in Lightroom every time with these simple steps and techniques you can use on any photograph. 

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.  

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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? 

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.  Whether you are shooting in automatic or manual mode, cameras always measure the reflected light and tries to give you the correct exposure.

Whether you're just starting out on your journey with a camera, or one has been by your side for decades, improving your long exposure images will always be welcome. 

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.

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. 

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.

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. 

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. 

Smokes and mirrors has been a trademark for most cinematic and commercial-looking video projects. In this video tutorial it's mostly mirrors that were used.

Karl Taylor brings us this great video about natural light portraits, and the one tool he feels is essential for shooting into the light.  

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.  

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. 

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.  Commercial work with clients is always welcomed as we all require money to survive but if you’re in the arts purely for the money then you may be in the wrong industry.

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.

If you stack too many requirements onto getting yourself to shoot, you may miss out on simply enjoying photography like you did when you started. 

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!