Which is why some photographers turn to artificial light: Key Benefits of Artificial Light If you decide you want your subject to be backlit rather than sidelight, or lit from overhead rather than frontlight, then tough luck you either have to move your subject (which is often impossible), or wait hours for another shot. You also can’t manipulate natural light to achieve the lighting directions that you want. This can be frustrating, especially if you’re the type of photographer who needs to schedule clients throughout the day, and you can’t afford to constantly reschedule over and over again. Some times of the day the light is nice and golden other times of the day the light is cold and harsh. Some days it’s cloudy some days it’s sunny. If you’re using natural light, you don’t get to choose how the light will look at different points in time. Natural light just doesn’t offer much control. That said, natural light does come with some drawbacks: Key Problems of Natural Light Natural light is easy to use, it’s free, it’s expansive (so you can photograph large subjects, such as sweeping landscapes), and you can work with it from a distance (so that you don’t have to approach with a flash). (There are some exceptions, but they’re few and far between.) You don’t have to bring the light source near to your subject, which makes bird photography (where birds are liable to fly away if you try to approach them with a flash!), wildlife photography (as with birds, wildlife doesn’t respond well to a close approach!), and street photography (where you unobtrusively photograph people on the streets) clear natural light genres. Note that natural light also allows you to photograph subjects from a distance. Even the most powerful flashes will fail to light up an entire beach scene, which means that, if you want to pursue certain genres of photography, natural light is the only way to go. Natural light also uses a huge light source (the sun!), which is key if you want to capture images of sweeping landscapes. Plus, you don’t have to worry about complex lighting setups that involve, say, three off-camera flashes and three separate flash umbrellas. You can concentrate on your core gear–your camera and (possibly) lenses–and you don’t have to worry about paying for expensive artificial lighting kits. If you’re starting out in photography, or you’re doing photography on a budget, then natural light is an extremely convenient way of proceeding. It also involves zero setup, and it costs nothing. Natural light is the most common form of lighting used by photographers, for one huge reason: Now that you know what natural light is, it’s time to talk about its strengths. Photographers sometimes use mixed lighting for the best effect, where they combine light from the sun with a flash, or light from a streetlamp with moonlight. Note that natural light also includes moonlight, which means that photos shot at night, without any aid from artificial light sources, count as “naturally lit.”īy the way, it’s worth noting that you don’t always have to work with purely natural lighting or purely artificial lighting. If you shoot landscape photos at sunrise and sunset, you’re using natural light. If you shoot street photos in the harsh midday sunlight, you’re using natural light. So any light that comes from the sun is natural, which means that any daylight, no matter how strong or weak, qualifies as natural light. Natural light refers to any light that comes from natural, non-technological sources.
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