Basic Photography | Tips For Natural Light Photography

© 2011 Wazari Wazir | Newborn Photography | My Son Raphael | 50mm | ISO 200 | f/2.0 | 1/1600

It is no secret that I use natural light for most of my son pictures, I don’t like using flash when it comes to photographing my son, I like to keep it natural and even though I know that flash can help me in certain situation when the lighting is bad, I choose not to use it. I take picture of my son just for my family, I don’t do business taking picture of other people children. So I can choose when to shoot and when not to shoot, when the lighting is bad, I choose not to shoot, there will always another day, God Willing, “InsyaAllah”.

So basically for me when I decided to take a picture of my son whether it was around my house or somewhere else, I will look for a quality of light. I will choose a location where I don’t have to use High ISO above 200 to take a picture of my son, the reason is that, using higher ISO will make my picture become grainy or will have some “digital noise” which I don’t like it, but if I decided that I want to add some grain to my picture, I will add it later in Photoshop but when shooting, I like to use lower ISO, 100 to 200.

The first thing is lighting, then when I found the right place, I will look at the quality of the lighting, I don’t like to shoot under harsh lighting condition because it won’t look good and most of the times, harsh lighting especially during midday, they tend to produce harsh shadows on someone face which personally not my taste. I like to keep my lighting flat, normally I will choose under the shade place, inside a building, shelter or anything as long as my subject does not get a direct contact from the sun.

© 2011 Wazari Wazir | Tips for Using Natural Light Photography | Welcome to My Mini Studio | Hulu Langat Selangor

To give you a better understanding about how I use natural light during mid-day, here i”m sharing with you the actual “set-up” of my mini studio. But the truth to be told, I did not come all the way to Hulu Langat just to scout for  this location, I came here to let HaiQal, my son play with the waterfall here and on my way to the waterfall, I happen to find this shelter and immediately I fall in love with this small shelter, the lighting was harsh but since it is a mid-day but the lighting inside the shelter is soft, perfect, I don’t even need to use reflector to photograph my son here.

This is the perfect shade area where you can see that the lighting get diffused from the transparent plastic roof there and the lighting that comes through it is soft, evenly lit. I hope by sharing this behind the scene picture, you get a better idea about where to shoot when the lighting is harsh like during mid-day. The tips is just stay away from a direct sunlight. You don’t have to drive all the way to the country side to get a perfect lighting condition, you can get great light in the heart of city centre.

You just need to have a little bit of understanding about the light and the quality of light. As a natural light photographer, we can’t change where the sun is shining, but we can choose or plan where to shoot our subject. Using reflector is good if you want to have better control of where the light hitting your subject, maybe you want more light on the subject face and reflector will help you but the reason why I don’t like to use reflector when shooting a picture of my son especially in the public place like this one is that I don’t want to get other people attention.

I don’t want to look like “professional photographer on assignment”, shooting commercial shot, I just want to keep it simple, so I don’t need anything more than just my camera with 50mm lens attached and good lighting. Passers by can’t imagined the outcome of the photo shoot when they see I take the picture on this location but I knew beforehand what the result will look like. No flash, no diffuser, just pure natural light, the secret is to find the right location with the best lighting possible.

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