When natural light photography goes wrong.

raise your hand if you do natural light portraits it's probably the easiest type of photography to do most of us start with natural light portraits but we make some mistakes so i made a little list here on the mistakes that i see when you post pictures i've never done any of these okay let's start with the first one the first one the first mistake natural light photographers make is not assessing or even seeing the light i think when we all first start out we just we see our subject more than we see light i think that's how we all start so a lot of my early portraits sometimes there wasn't any light sometimes the light was coming from behind from the side i noticed that there was no pattern so i wasn't really even seeing the light so that's the first mistake that's like rock bottom foundation you're the worst not seeing the light number two direction of light now this one goes with the first one after a while you start to see the light but you're not really using where you're not using the best light in the environment and we talked about this i did a video called good light bad light if you want to watch that i'll link it up below but we talked about how you can use your hands and move them around and kind of see where your hands uh light up like for example if you notice here my hands are kind of in shadow so a lot of my beginning photos i took with the good light actually being behind my subject or you know a little bit to the side that way and if i were to just move my hands around you could see your hands like light up really nice and so that's where the good light is coming from use your hands i've already lost track of what number i'm up to so i'm just gonna keep the list going i think this is number three but one problem i see a lot of new photographers do and i did is that when we photograph people most of the natural light whether it be an overcast day or you're in the shade comes from above and what happens is we end up getting sort of raccoon eyes because our brows leave shadows underneath and so you kind of get raccoon eyes and at first i was shooting portraits that way i could see old pictures of my kids that all i'd have to do is either get their chin up a little bit if i had them look up i noticed that my pictures were better if the kids were like looking up at me these were all when you start out these are all accidents when you're like hey that picture's good so um you just need to understand why some of the pictures are good and a lot of times that has to do with that the light is hitting the subject broadly on the face as opposed to leaving those shadows now another problem which is a little bit more rare but sometimes if the light bounces off a very reflective surface like a sidewalk it will actually give halloween lighting and you'll notice that if you see a catch light that's a little low in the eyes and this also is a problem when you first start out and you you know someone tells you to use a reflector and if you use a reflector a lot of times people start by putting the reflector underneath if the sun hits that reflector you're going to get more halloween lighting and it's kind of hard to see when you're first starting out but as you get better you'll notice you'll you'll be able to use a reflector a little bit better to bounce light back in to fill in those shadows the next one is over relying on shade open shade a lot of times i've seen photographers you know like if i'm in a park or something and i see them shooting an engagement session or something i could see the beautiful light over here there's just either a shaft of light or there's a little bit brighter area and they're kind of more concerned about being under a bridge or where there's too much shade and sometimes we overuse the shade because we're afraid of the sun so there's two things here number one if you are gonna shoot an open shade which i do all the time i highly recommend using the border between where the sun is hitting and where the shade is that's gonna kind of be your best light right there because you're getting that really nice soft light where the shade starts the more you move into the tunnel or the building or further away from that light the quality is not going to be as good and you're going to kind of get dead eyes sometimes dead eyes is where you're not using the best direction of light you're not using the best quality of light and this happens when a lot of times dead eyes that means there's no catch light in the eyes when you're deep in the buildings you're deep in the alley and there's no light bouncing off anything okay so be aware of dead eyes be aware of just being too much in the shade um which brings me to my next point something that i learned recently is to embrace the sunlight i was so afraid as a natural light photographer of the sun that i was always looking for shade and going deep into the shade now by the way when i started out i did use the sun and another big mistake on the list is you don't again know what the light is doing so you will cast shadows get cast on other people if the direction is wrong and the quality is wrong so a lot of times using the open sun incorrectly gives you horrible shadows so uh that's why you're afraid of the sun because you look at your pictures you're like oh man now what i always used to do in the beginning is turn their back to the sun and try to reflect some light back that is a tried and true technique but what i've started doing recently was actually just using the sun like who cares in fashion photography and a lot of editorial photography they use the sun right in the middle of the street as long as you have the person's face not casting you know extreme shadows then you should be okay not being afraid of the sun the next one is color casts i think a lot of natural light photographers don't really take into consideration that they're photographing on red brick or that the person's wearing an orange shirt or that the building they're next to that they're putting them on is all brick that's really going to affect your skin tones oh the other one is a super bright sunny day and grass the green hue of grass lighting up the person underneath so if you are going to shoot in those nightmare situations you really should have a reflector that blocks that dirty light that colored light away from people's skin because if you do shoot in those environments you're going to be a little frustrated you're going to blame your camera you you're not going to understand what's going on when you edit why do this why does the skin look weird and there are times where i've had to shoot in those environments and i've actually created brushes in lightroom where one of them is remove grass hue and you just brush off some of the green by adding a little bit of red but so it happens sometimes the grass just bounces up into people's skin try to use a reflector or if you have time uh you are a natural light photographer but we're going to talk about using artificial lights when you have to in a second actually let's do it now the last thing that kind of happens when you're a national a national photographer thank you america the other thing that happens when you're a natural light photographer is when there's no light and this one has happened to me in the past there was one time where i forgot that it was daylight savings time and i had scheduled a shoot and here if you're not from america we change our clock like twice a year and all of a sudden the sun was setting around 4 p.m and that's when the shoot started and as a natural light photographer all is good unless all of a sudden there's no light and so i i think if you're deep in shadow or you're in that tunnel and you're restricted that's where you as a natural light photographer need to say you know what i'm a natural light photographer but i have lights and i can use lights and you'll notice that your work will be will move to the next level if you start using light sometimes when there's no light when you're shooting in the middle of the day and you're using open shade that's kind of green because of the grass well you know what adding a light will decontaminate that scene and it'll get rid of the red brick and you'll have more consistency because you know what color your lights are i think that there's a point where you're a natural light photographer but you can't always rely on natural light you know sometimes you do need to grab have like a backup flash or something with a modifier and learn how to use that i think when there's no light you're really going to get great results because you know what you're doing you are not at the mercy of the natural light all right i hope it helped you guys and happy shooting you

Channel: Omar Gonzalez Photography

Views: 737,053

Keywords: photography, cameras, lenses, omar gonzalez photography, portraits

Id: 6FpoPrGH1CQ

Length: 9min 24sec (564 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 28 2022