Shooting with available light (daylight photography)

Hello guys!

This is Paul. Want to speak about something that you can’t live without if you’re a wedding, portrait, or commercial photographer. It’s daylight, and this is the point where you start your image. Every time you come to the location, you have some available light.

It’s not the best option to start building your light schemes ignoring available light because you may have a great light already and it will save you lots of time and make your images even better.

One thing everyone need to understand is that there is no bad light. There is only a lack of knowledge and skills to find the best light on any location.

Without the light, we cannot understand what we see in front of us, we also need shadows to see the volume of these objects, so they become 3 dimensional. Every one of us has access to windows and just having one source of light, you’re able to get a significant amount of different styles of images and adding some extra objects or reflections in front of your lens options becomes endless.

Knowing how light works helps to be ready for any kind of location and to be able to produce great wedding or portrait photos on any type of location, and this is how you become a professional.

A window is simply one big softbox that you would buy in a photography store. Here are some options for how any window can be used:

You can place your model in front of the window so you’re standing on the side of the window like this and you’re getting just straight beauty shot.

You can position your model on a side like this, and you will be able to get a side light that can be used for such kind of pictures.

You can put your subject closer to the window. Stand on the side. In this case, you will get a nice silhouette shot.

It’s hard to explain everything in one article, but I hope you got the idea that light is not something unimaginable, something that you will never be able to understand. I can tell you a secret – if you practice, if you just go and shoot little by little learning the light you’ll start to see how it works and no online course will ever give you the full understanding and skills.

In the next videos, I will share more cool things.