Were these photos taken with mostly natural light or artificial light? SPOILER: you know this wouldn’t be an interesting blog post if it was taken completely with natural light.
But you may be asking yourself why this question even matters? Well, in this blog post we’ll tell you why…and how…we sometimes like to make artificial light look like natural light.
First, why does it even matter? Well, we’ve specialized in architectural and real estate photography for almost as long as we’ve been photographing people. And it’s had a big influence on the sense of space, light, and geometry that comes through in our work. There aren’t really any set rules, but we believe artificial light usually gives images a feeling of either drama or intimacy (think of bright stage spotlights or a candle-lit dinner). While, natural light usually gives a feeling of energy, openness, or airiness (think of a bright summer day or a sunset on the beach). Again, these aren’t rules, just very rough generalizations.
So sometimes we’re placed in situations where we want to alter the ‘feel’ of a scene, and one very impactful way of doing that is through manipulating light. On this particular job we were commissioned to capture images of a newly-renovated upscale downtown apartment building. The owner/investor had spent a lot of money rehabbing the units in this very old building, and they looked great. They had large windows, high ceilings, and bright neutral colors. Unfortunately, we were there on an extremely dark and gloomy day, and as is usually the case, we were on a tight deadline. We needed to capture those photos ASAP, while still expressing the openness and airiness of the units. That meant using flash strobes, but NOT making it look like we were using flash strobes.
And that brings us to the second question: how did we do it? Well, a lot of it comes down to practice and feel, but here are three tips on how you can achieve a similar result.
TIP #1: MOVE YOUR LIGHT SOURCE OFF-CAMERA
There’s no easier way to identify artificial flash photography than when you’re looking at a photo where the primary source of light was attached to the camera and then that source of light was pointed directly at the scene or subject.
Go into a moderately lit room with your smartphone, turn on the flash, and take a photo. The result will probably be sharp and accurate, but it won’t look like natural light. Now grab a really bright flashlight, point it into one of the upper corners of the same room, turn off your phone’s flash, and take the photo again…and now it will probably look a lot closer to natural light than your first photo.
The reason for this is simple. The source for natural light is our glorious sun, and unless you’re God himself, you can’t put the sun on your camera and aim all of it’s light directly at your subject. If you’re outside during the day, the sun is up in the sky somewhere, and if you’re inside it’s coming through a window, or set of windows. But sunlight is never coming from your camera. Even if we don’t stop and consciously think about it, we SUB-consciously know the difference when we look at a photo.
So invest in a tripod (or turn a friend or family-member into your human bipod) and make sure you can trigger your flash remotely. Then, try and make it obvious that your light source is NOT coming from your camera. This will change everything.
TIP #2: PICK A PRIMARY DIRECTION FOR YOUR FAKE ‘SUNLIGHT’
A lot of the advice we’ve seen on how to mimic natural light seems to leave out something we think is essential: directionality.
Even in the middle of a bright summer day, when it seems like everything is flooded with light, you can easily point to the sun at a moment’s notice. That’s because, even though the sun is a giant ball of burning hot gas that’s over 850,000 miles in diameter…and even though it’s being diffused through our clouds and our atmosphere…it’s still just one single light source. So even as sunlight bounces and reflects off of objects to get into and under stuff, it still starts out as just one really bright ball of light, then that light spreads out from there. That means it creates shadows, hot spots, points of glare, and other ‘imperfections’.
That’s why simply taking your flash off-camera isn’t always enough. If you use two equal sources of light (two flashes set-up identically on opposite sides of the room, or a window and flash that are giving equal light) your lighting might still look ‘artificial’.
So when we want to mimic the sun, we like to choose one area to serve as our primary source of light. It doesn’t matter if we’re using one flash or five flashes, we create a sense of directionality to our light by making sure one light source is brighter or larger than all the others.
TIP #3: EXPERIMENT
We almost always add this final tip to our tutorials, but we mention it over and over because it’s key: experimentation is important.
Every job, subject, room, scene, etc. are all different. So if you want to make your flash photography look like natural light, you have to use some trial and error. We’ve done it enough that we can usually achieve about 80% of the look we want on the first frame, and that’s from years of practice. But the other 20% makes a huge difference, and it’s achieved through making tiny detailed adjustments. Sometimes you need to aim your flash at a wall, at a window, at the ceiling, or even at the camera. Sometimes you have to adjust your shutter speed and/or ISO to brighten up the areas your flash can’t reach. Sometimes you need to adjust your composition to hide your artificial light source. If we tried to mention every possible consideration, we’d probably end up writing an entire book, and we’d still miss some things. The truth is that even after years of experience, we still experiment all the time and we’re always learning.
So, use our tips as a guideline, take some photos, evaluate what you like and don’t like, make adjustments…then lather, rinse, and repeat.
