Tag Archives: natural light photography

Top 20 Photography Tutorials

I’ve written over 100 posts on this website now, and as I look back on it, I realise that a lot of it would probably be lost to many users, who have only started using the website recently. This is Expert Photography’s top 20 photography tutorials; they’re the most popular tutorials on my website, as decided by the visitors who viewed them. Hopefully you can find something new and learn something today.

#1 - 4 Steps To Mastering Creative Night Photography

If you look at my personal portfolio, you’ll notice that I’ve got a good amount of night photography in there, and that’s because night-time is one of my favourite times to shoot. Shooting at night for me, came about from the fact that I didn’t really have too much free time in the day, so I would go out and practice my photography with some friends at night. It’s a slightly harder skill to master because the shots take longer to expose, I liken it to shooting on film; you think a lot more about your settings and composition before you shoot, which helps you to hone in your skill much quicker.

#2 - 4 Steps To Understanding ISO

ISO is one of three factors which determine the exposure of a photo, along with aperture and shutter speed. To really get the most out of your photos you need to know what all 3 do and how you can use them. Read this post to gain a more in depth knowledge of how to use your camera properly and start taking expert photos. ISO doesn’t just effect the exposure of the photo, there’s also grain/digital noise, and the more you understad about what it does, the better your photos will come out.

#3 - Top 10 Photography Clichés You Should Avoid To Improve Your Photography

Photography is subjective, and people’s opinions on what’s cliché and what’s not is entirely up to them. Everything in moderation is the key to avoiding cliche photos, as you can get away with doing certain things a few times before it becomes boring and repetitive. If you’re new to photography, then avoiding the list of cliches below will help you to avoid taking photos that may well be dismissed as amateur.

A good photo will stand up to criticism, without the need for clichés or post processing.

#4 - 4 Steps To Understanding Focal Lengths

Knowing what the focal length means, especially in relation to your camera, is very important when it comes to buying lenses. This post will leave you well informed with the correct information at to what the lenses do, which ones are right for you, how to use them creatively, and all the technical speak you’ll need. It’s not just a case of how much a lens zooms, you’ve also go to be aware of the changes in perspective and the crop factor. This tutorial has had a steady stream of visitors since I posted it.

#5 - 4 Steps To Understanding Shutter Speed and Its Creative Uses

Shutter speed is the most obvious of the 3 factors that create an exposure, and it has the biggest effect to your photos. With a poor knowledge of how the shutter speed will affect your photos, you’ll end up with blurred results. This post teaches you the right speed for the right situation, as well as how to use the shutter speed creatively. This was the first thing I learned when I started photography, so that’s probably why I play around so much with different speeds and night photography.

#6 - 10 Reasons Your Photos Suck

If you’re trying to improve your photography, then it helps to know where you’re going wrong. This article is all about pointing out where you’re going wrong and what you should be doing to fix it. It’s not easy taking consistently good photos, but once you’ve gotten the hang of it, it becomes incredibly rewarding. I wish someone had pointed out where I was going wrong back when I started, I’m positive that I would have improved at a much faster rate.

#7 - How To: Shooting Into The Sun

Spring and summer is a great time to be outside, utilising the light that sun provides us, and shooting into the sun is a really creative way of capturing this. Shooting into the sun produces lens flare, but instead of it damaging your photos, you can learn to use it creatively to get spectacular results. It used to be something that I feared when taking photos, but now I embrace it, and adjust my exposure to produce some awesome results.

#8 - 10 Embarrassing Mistakes I Made As A Beginner Photographer

When I first bought my camera, I read the manual straight away; I used to take it on photo walks and read it before bed. This wasn’t really like me, but I knew I wanted to become good at photography and to do so, I was going to have to learn. I’d encourage everybody to do the same, but there’s only so much you can read in there; websites with lots of photos like this are much better. Here’s a list of stupid mistakes I made. How many have you made? How many are you still making?

#9 - 4 Steps To Understanding White Balance

If you’ve ever taken photos indoors, without a flash, and wondered why everyone looks so orange, then this post will definitely help you. White balance can be hard to master at first, but once you understand it a little more, it can become quite intuitive, and understanding white balance is absolutely key to making your photos look good. Auto white balance just isn’t up to the job these days, and I’ve noticed this particularly with Canon cameras, so the faster you learn, the sooner you’ll start producing better results.

#10 - How To: The Harris Shutter Effect

The Harris Shutter effect is a lot of fun to play around with when you’ve got some spare time and is an easy way to impress friends. This effect can be used in just about any situation where you can keep the camera steady and is a great way to show movement in a photo. It works by taking a sequence of photos and overlaying them in Photoshop or GIMP, and using different colour channels to overlap them.

#11 - 20 Photos And Tips For Shooting With Your Aperture Open

#12 - 10 Top Tips To Taking Sharper Photos

Quality photos come from a good knowledge of how to take them properly. Taking sharper images are isn’t actually nearly as hard as you may think, the techniques are simple, and easily achieved by most people. I get asked all the time how I manage to take such sharp photos, and that’s the reason that I wrote this tutorial. This list will help you improve your images, to get the sort of detail you’ve been looking for, in 10 easy steps.

#13 - Understanding Metering Modes

Metering is the process that the camera goes through to look at a scene and work out what the exposure should be. There’s a variety of different modes that you can use to best suit the type of photo that you’re taking and in this post we’ll be looking at exactly what the modes do and when you should be using them. Simply switching from spot metering to evaluative metering can have a massive difference, like it’s had in the photo below. It ignores the sun from the sky, and meters for the majority of the scene.

#14 - How To: Working With A Model

Working with models is a great way to experiment with photos that you couldn’t take on your own, and it often leads to even better photos as you have someone to bounce ideas off. This post covers everything you need to know about working with a model and how to act professionally around them to get the best results. Depending on where you find your models, will change how you should behave with them, but common sense applies to most, and it usually ends up being a lot of fun.

#15 - 5 Steps To Understanding Aperture

Aperture is 1 of 3 factors that create an exposure, so understanding aperture is a good way of getting to grips with taking an evenly exposed photo. There are also negative and creative effects of different apertures and this post will teach you what they are and how to use them to your advantage. Aperture is probably one of the most difficult parts of exposure to get to grips with, but when you do, your understanding will yield much better results.

#16 - Understanding Exposure

Simply put: a photo is an exposure, and the more you understand about exposure, the better your photos will be. Once you start to grasp exactly what aperture, shutter speed and ISO does to a photo, you’ll know how to use them correctly and creatively. This posts covers how to create the right exposure for a situation, as well as the negative consequences of each exposure factor. There are also links to read up in much more detail.

#17 - When You Should And Should NOT Use A Flash

I used to think of myself as someone who didn’t use the flash on the camera, but that was because I was completely unaware of the difference an off camera flash can make. I almost always carry one with me whenever I’m out now, even in the day time, as there’s a ton of different uses for it. We’re gonna start by looking at possible uses of the flash and then look at when you wouldn’t want to use it.

#18 - The Ultimate Guide To Natural Light Photography

Natural light is type of lighting that we’re all very familiar with, but have you ever actually stopped for a moment to think about the effect that it has on your photography and how you can use it to your advantage? The difference between studio lighting or flashes and natural light is that we have very little control over it and its unpredictable nature, meaning that we have work around it, and with it.

#19 - How To: Fill Flash

We’ve all been there in a moment of frustration when we’re first starting out, wondering just why an expensive digital SLR camera won’t capture what our eyes are seeing, especially when a pocket camera does it with ease. That’s because SLR’s aren’t as intelligent as our eyes and they hand back the control that the pocket cam takes away. This post will help you to get one step closer to the perfect exposure.

#20 - How To: Low Light Photography

The buttons you press on a camera to produce the right exposure in low light, are all the same as when you shoot in the middle of the day; the same rules of exposure apply, it’s just a little harder to get there. When there’s less light in a scene, you have 2 choices; either you create more light yourself or you change the settings on your camera to react differently to the light available. This tutorial is all about how to do that.That’s all 20. If you have enjoyed them, then I would encourage you to click ‘Like’ below and become a part of my rapidly growing fan page. Thanks, Josh.

How to Use Window Light for Portraits

Window light is an excellent, and free light source, that can achieve the same effects as much bigger, and more expensive lighting equipment. A large window is essentially a large softbox that diffuses the light into the room and around the subject that you place infront of it. The earliest photography studios didn’t use fancy electric lighting, they just used big windows.

How it Works

If you see the window as a softbox, then everything that you know about a softbox will also be relevant to this lighting. First of all, the larger the window, the softer the light, as the light has a wider angle at which to light your face, meaning that there’s less shadows. This is very important to remember if you’re trying to take photos with hard shadows. There are many ways in which a window is better than a softbox, because it comes in all different sizes, they’re everywhere, free to use, and easy to experiment with. The downsides are that the light is dependant on the weather and time of day, and you have to move the model or subject, rather than the window.

Because window light can be particularly soft, it’s flattering as the shadows that appear on the face are very natural and dont accentuate any features. If there were any features that you would want to hide, you’d want to make the light harder by standing further from the window, or using a smaller window. A window is a great way to get an expensive look, for free, but how you use the window is up to you.

Firstly, the light is very directional as it’s side light, unless of course if the window is above you. The closer you stand to the window, the bigger and brighter it is. If you’re going to be shooting with the purpose of using window light, then it’s important to find a large room that you can move around in, and play with the light. Also, choose a time of day where the sun in the sky is going to be acting the way you want it to be. When the sun is out, the light is a lot harder, even through a window, but when it’s overcast, the whole sky is acting as a light source. Think of the difference between shadows on a sunny day and an overcast day.

When you place the subject in the middle of a window, with the window to the left of them, you’re always going to light up the left side of the face a lot more than the right. Because the center of the light source is reaching the left side of the face, there are less angles to reach the right side of the face. The creates a pretty cool effect with more shadows on the right side, but you need to remember to expose for the left and not the right side of the face, otherwise the photo will be underexposed.

Move the subject closer to you, with the majority of the window light behind them ,and the lighting on the face will become softer as the left side of the face starts to even out with the right. Go the other way and the right side of the face will even out with the light making for a more evenly lit subject. It’s important to experiment and see which you like the most and whether it suits whatever you’re shooting. Obviously there are more uses for window lighting than just models, there’s still life, animals, etc. too.

When the subject is facing a window, you will end up with a very soft, but rather flat image, with fewer shadows. Yes, this will light the subject, but it won’t look all that interesting compared to some of the other effects that you can produce. It’s also important to note the other light available in the room that you’re shooting. You don’t want any light to be on, otherwise you’ll end up not being able to set the right white balance as there will be more than one source.

When the window is behind the subject, then you’re effectively going to have the same sort of results as when you shoot into the sun. The camera will probably try to expose for the window, unless you’re using spot metering, and that will produce a silhouette. When you have the camera set to spot metering, you can overexpose the background to blow out the light, while exposing for the subject in the foreground. This can produce a very cool effect, and it’s about the only interesting white/light background that I like to use.

When you want harder light than you usually get from a large window, you have two choices, you either stand further back from the window, or you use a smaller window. Standing further back will mean that the light is still quite soft, just not as soft, as the light is further away, and can’t reach the same angles. When you use a smaller window, you’re doing something very similar, only instead of smaller from being farther away, it’s just a smaller light source. This will produce a harder light as, again, the light can’t reach the same angles as a large window. I personally like using smaller windows for photos of a person upper torso and head, and larger window for full body shot.

How to Take Control of Natural Light with Photography

You can take breathtaking photos using natural light, but first, you need to understand how to use it to your advantage. The difference between studio lighting or flashes, and natural light, is that we have very little control over it and its unpredictable nature, meaning that we have work work around it.

Time of Day Outdoors

You’ve probably been told before that you shouldn’t be shooting in the middle of the day, because even though the sun is bright, it’s hard to control and looks very harsh. While all this is true, I think it would be a shame not to use this time to get some decent photos because if you know how to handle the light, it stops becoming a problem.

So long as you’re either using a polarising filter (I highly recommend you click that link), or you’re shooting in an area where some of the light can be diffused, then the harsh lighting isn’t going to be a problem. If you read my tutorial on polarising filters, you would have seen the massive difference that one can make when shooting in direct sunlight and there’s plenty of photo examples, so instead of showing you more, here’s a photo of the harsh midday sun diffused.

Mornings and evenings offer the softest light as the sun is lower in the sky and casts softer shadows, and these are typically the best times to shoot. Morning has the added advantage of being fairly quiet, so you can really capture a lot of the natural light’s progression as the sun rises. Because the sun is coming from an angle, you’re invariable left with a lot of shadows and this soft contrast makes for some pretty interesting texture.

I’m not much of a morning person so the majority of my photography happens during the evenings if I’m working on something else during the day, and this time is typically associated with sunsets. If you’ve read my post on photography cliches, you’ll know that I warn beginners away from shooting sunsets and part of the reason for this is that there’s much better things to be shooting at that time of day. When you’ve got a good subject, the soft evening light will flatter their features and make for some really cool photography. The photo below was shot in the evening, with no direct light from the sun, and the dynamic range has vastly improved because of it.

Angle of Light & Location

Now that we’ve established the best time to shoot is when the sun is lower in the sky, that leaves you with basically 3 main options for choosing the angle you want the light to hit your subject. The first and most obvious option is to have the light shine straight onto the subject. In the photo below, the sun went down over my right shoulder and you can clearly see how the soft evening light has flooded over my models face, making for a very warm photo. Because the sun was reasonably low in the sky, that meant that there were no big and nasty shadows beneath the chin either. I like this photo, but there are better angles to shoot the light from.

I’m a big fan of shooting into the sun in the evening, as you get to play around with some interesting lens flare which produces some really cool shots. This photo was taken about an hour before the one above and the lighting on for the face heavily relied on the natural light still around in the sky, while over exposing the lens flare so that the face was not underexposed (which I achieved by using spot metering). This photo is slightly softer than the one above as the shadows are much more natural on the face and the flare that floods the photo makes it even more so. If you want to see more photos like this, click here.

The final major option to shooting in natural light is side lighting, demonstrated by my photo below. It has many uses as you can get your model to adjust their angle slightly to find the most flattering angle for the light. Side light is particularly effective on flat, but slightly curves surfaces like the model’s stomach – it really helps to give the lighting a soft touch.

Side lighting is the most adaptable, but it’s also the easiest to get wrong. The photo below would have been very good if it wasn’t for the side lighting on the model’s nose that cast an ugly sharp shadow on the side of her face.

Natural Light Indoors

It’s easy to see how you would use the light from the sun when you’re outside, but when you’re inside, you have to use much more ambient light, or window light. Window light is probably my favourite type of indoor lighting as there’s a lot that can be done with it; it’s a form of side lighting and is heavily dependant on the distance from the source, and therefore, easy to manipulate.

If you have a look at my first subject below, you’ll see that they are very close to the window, capturing a lot of the light that is passing through it. One side of the face receives a lot less light, but because the vehicle we were in was well lit, as was the shoulder next to the face. This meant that the subject was still very well lit, and the shadows appear very natural.

When you compare the photo above to the one below, you’ll notice that the subject is actually about 2 foot further away from the window, meaning that the light has had more distance to disperse about the room and spread the light about. This has resulted in a much darker photo and a stronger contrast between the two sides of the face. The window frame to the right of the photograph creates a nice balance to the photo and contrast on the right-angle of the open frame shows how the light passes through the window.

If you’re dealing with natural light indoors, then we’re mostly talking about light that has come in through the window, whether they’re near the window or not. Part of the reason why these photos always look so soft is because the photographer is stuck using a wider aperture than they would have liked, in order to capture enough light for a well exposed picture. The photo below was set to f/2.8, which was all the way open on my lens and you can tell that it was very naturally lit, although I would have preferred some lighter conditions.

Weather

It’s a common mistake between beginner photographers, that they think they can’t go out shooting when it’s raining or overcast, for fear of bad photos. This is a myth, in fact overcast lighting is a much easier light to work with and can produce equally interesting photos. Take the photo below for example, it evokes feelings such as bleakness, coldness, desolateness, and so on, and these feelings are a lot harder to evoke in bright sun. The similarities between the colour of the sky and sea which is produced from an overcast day, really helps to make this photo as strong as it is.

Always check the weather forecast before you go out shooting, because if there’s going to be rain, followed by some bright sunshine, it’s a great time to shoot landscapes where the shadows cast by the clouds can be captured. The photo below would have been relatively boring if it had not been for the dynamic changes in the green colour, which helped to emphasise the bumpy nature of the hills ahead. This is a very basic example of what I’m talking about, have a play for yourself and link us to some of your results.

No matter the weather, evening lighting, hidden from the sun all starts to look very similar, and not only does the brightness and dynamics change, but so does the colour. When the sky starts to bounce light off the surfaces on the ground, the whole colour of the scene can start to change, like in this photo below shot on a slightly overcast evening before the sun went down.

Diffusing The Light

Whenever you’re in unfavourable lighting conditions, whether you’re using the sun or the flash on your camera, you always want to try and diffuse the light in whatever way you can. There’s countless ways of doing this, but I thought I’d show you one of my favourite examples, and that’s to use the woods. The leaves will reduce the amount of light coming through, reaching your subject, while still providing gaps for direct light.

In my photo below, the woods were well protected from the harsh sun while they still allowed enough light through to light up the woods. The model positioned herself by a tree and stretched her legs out so they were lit by the ambient light of the woods and she leaned her face forward to a point at which the light was shining directly on it, producing a very soft and diffused look and one of my favourite photos of the set. Here it is:

20 Tips for Shooting With a Shallow Depth of Field

What’s It All About?

Shooting with the aperture wide open is a really good way of taking soft, naturally lit photos, as the aperture produces a shallow depth of field, and allow the maximum amount of light in. It’s also a great way of drawing the viewers eye to a certain part of the photo, as the majority of the photo will be out of focus. The photos in this post were shot on 3 different lenses; a 24-70 f/2.8, a 35mm f/1.4 and a 50mm f/1.8, and even though the maximum aperture varies, they were still shot at their maximum. The reason for this is because the bokeh of the photo is much better, and for those that don’t understand what that means, I sugest you read that article, but for the purpose of this post; it’s the aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of a photograph. It relates to how nice the background blur looks when out-of-focus.

Even though the numbers 1.4 and 2.8 are really close together, 1.4 actually allows 4 times more light into the lens then 2.8. If you’ve read my post on aperture, you’ll understand what this means, but here’s a quick explanation of how it works. f/1.4 is 2 stops wider then f/2.8: f/1.4, f/2, f/2.8… And for every f-stop, the lens allows half the amount of light in, so f/2 allows half the light of f/1.4 and f/2.8 allows half the light of that. Because these photos were shot with the aperture wide open, the allow a lot more light and create much softer photos.

Tips and Photos

The wider your aperture, the wider the bokeh will be, and anything other then wide open will cause the bokeh to be the shape of the aperture rings (usually pentagon or octagon

It’s a great way to produce soft backgrounds like this photo below shot at f/2.8. 2011 01 19 at 15 57 52 20 Tips for Shooting With a Shallow Depth of Field When you’re shooting indoors, there’s a lot less available light so bouncing flash off a wall and shooting with a wide aperture, creates just the right amount of light to create an good exposure.
Christmas Eve 1088 20 Tips for Shooting With a Shallow Depth of Field When your aperture is wide open, your depth of field is really shallow and it’s hard to find a good focal point. You can either really worry about this or not worry at all. In the photo below, shot at f/1.8, the lack of focus actually makes it look better in my opinion. IMG 0872 20 Tips for Shooting With a Shallow Depth of Field Shallow DoF helps to draw the attention to a certain part of the body, and leaves the rest blurred. IMG 1691 20 Tips for Shooting With a Shallow Depth of Field When you have mutltiple subjects in a scene, a wide aperture will only focus on 1 person, making it a great tool for selective focus in photography.
IMG 3146 2011 05 28 at 17 36 37 20 Tips for Shooting With a Shallow Depth of Field The photo below was shot wide open, which kept the background blurred, even though the subject wasn’t far away from it, and that makes the photos look a little eerier in my opinion. IMG 3354 20 Tips for Shooting With a Shallow Depth of Field To emphasise the DoF, place the subject in the scene moving away from you.
IMG 3468 20 Tips for Shooting With a Shallow Depth of Field Shot in twilight, the wide aperture allowed me capture loads of natural light in the background that I wouldn’t have captured otherwise.

The foreground may be out of focus, but that doesn’t me it doesn’t matter. Consider what’s in your foreground and how you can use it to spark some interest in your photo.

Be very careful where you’re focusing. Rather then focusing on her nose, I focused on the light on her cheek, underneath her sunglasses because that produced the best overall focus. Natural light if your best friend when shooting with a wide aperture. You can be more adventurous with placement of key features in a photo when you’re using a shallow depth of field, as the eyes will be drawn to whatever’s focused.
A wide open aperture is important when you’re shooting into the sun as the lens flare will be the same shape of your aperture, and anything other then wide open will cause the bokeh to be the shape of the aperture rings (usually pentagon or octagon).Wide apertures are great if you want to viewer to only look at a single part of a photo.

IMG 5205 2011 07 03 at 21 24 50 20 Tips for Shooting With a Shallow Depth of Field Top Tip! If you focus on the eyes of a your subject, the rest of the face will appear in focus too, even at f/1.4.
IMG 5336 2011 07 04 at 21 47 25 20 Tips for Shooting With a Shallow Depth of Field Wide aperture allows you to capture loads of light, which means you can turn up your shutter speed and take photos while you’re walking, of other moving subjects. IMG 6555 20 Tips for Shooting With a Shallow Depth of Field If there’s movement in your photo, focus on the most still part of the photo, like the lips in the photo below. IMG 8175 20 Tips for Shooting With a Shallow Depth of Field Wide apertures are particularly effective if you’re shooting through objects in your foreground as it turns them to a soft blur.
IMG 9099 20 Tips for Shooting With a Shallow Depth of Field If you’re going to be shooting with a wide aperture, consider what else you can put on that same focal plane and have multiplie points of interest in the photo. Not only was the camera focused on the model’s face, but the flowers she was reaching for too.