What is natural light? Natural light is the light that occurs naturally in the scene. Daylight, or in some cases, Moonlight. Any light produced by a man made source is not natural light. We will get to them later.
Ok, how do we handle this lighting? This gets frustrating at times. There is a school of thought that bright sunny days are great for pictures. Not so. Bright sunny days lead to way more contrast than your camera can handle. This holds true for digital or film. What happens is you either expose for the highlights and the shadows go very dark with no detail or you expose for the shadows and the sky and highlights are blown completely out. Also the shadows are very harsh. How do we handle that? I'll get to that a little later on.
What kind of lighting then if not bright sunny days? Overcast! Or at least a day with some clouds. The clouds will diffuse the sun and produce a softer more even light with softer shadows. Have a look at the following examples.
Front lighting.
Here it was bright sun behind me. You hear all the time you should put the sun behind your back to light your subject. Well he is lit alright. So bright he is squinting hard and look at the harsh shadows on his face from his glasses and on his neck from his chin. Not a very flattering picture.
Diffused sunlight.
In this photo, I waited for a cloud to cover the sun. Notice the almost complete lack of shadows. Only a slight shadow just under the cat tail at the stem. The light was very even. The contrast was less and the colors were more natural. Quite a difference from the harsh lighting in the previous photo.
Open shade.
This one was taken on a very bright day but in the open shade of a tree. Open shade is a great place to beat the brightness of the day. It can be behind a building or under a tree or some such place that has nice shade. Be careful with trees that you don't get sunlight popping through the leaves and leaving bright patches on your subjects. That makes for some odd looking effects.
Back lighting.
In this picture of my Mom and my daughter we see an example of back lighting. The light is coming from behind them not behind me. Notice how it produces a bit of a halo effect around them which really pulls them from the background.
Here is another example of back lighting that is on the extreme side. The sun is literally right behind the subject. I used the cat tail to block the sunrise which produces a great halo effect on the cat tail.
Back lighting is one of my favorite effects.
Side lighting.
Side lighting is a great way to show texture in your subject. Notice the vain in the leaf how the shadows fall and show the texture of the leaf and on the grains of sand.
The best thing I can suggest is practice and experiment and have fun with it. If you like the photo then it is a good photo. Dark shadows or not.
Chris.
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