6 best natural light Photography techniques to improve your natural light photos

There are a lot of factors that affect the quality of a photography and light plays an important role in them, even the word photography has the term light hidden in them. The lights used can be broadly classified into two types

Natural light and artificial lights

As the term says the main light source in here is the sun, there are so many benefits for natural light Photography

• Its cheap. AS natural light photos been created using the sun there are no extra expense needed in the area of lighting
• Works everywhere- Mostly comes into use when we opt for landscape photography or while taking indoor photography. Using natural light source can be considered as an excellent street photography tips for the composition of the frame
• Offers wide range of colours- we can see that the suns light differ during every time of the day which means we get different lighting conductions throughout the day which is great for beautifully compose a photo

Artificial lights are all those lights that is been externally added into the scene to light up the frame is called artificial lights

This also have so many benefits

• 1 Available at any given time.- the light source is made available for us when and where we needed them, in case of natural light photos they are only available till the availability of the sun
• we can have the full control- This artificial light can be controlled by the need of the photographer. We can easily customise the intensity the firing angle and so on

In this blog we are looking into steps to improve natural light photos using some of the cool and easy natural light photography techniques. These are some of the outdoor natural photography tips that I find would be useful for everyone to consider trying while taking natural light photos

• Use of neutral density filters {ND filters}
• Higher iso
• . Limit your Shutter speed to a higher value
• Choosing the time of the day
  • During golden hours
  •   Noon or harsh light hours
  •   Experiment with weather
• Use of reflectors
• Experiment with shadows

So hope you got some idea on the topics that we are going to discuss about. If you have any more things to add. Do inform us in comments. Without delay lets go into these topics in details

Natural light photography techniques to improve your photography

1.Use of neutral density filters [ND filters]

Let me start with an example so that you could better understand why its needed, When you are out in the harsh sun you would really feel a thought that it would be nice if I had a sunglasses with us to reduce the light intensity. I hope you had experienced them once. Well these ND filters act as a sunglass for our camera lens. This basically darken our image without disturbing the colors in the frame.

During the high intensity sun we a cant fully open up our eyes right, but using a sunglasses helps us in this situation. The ND filter also works the same. When we use this filter we could open up the aperture of the camera fully and let the camera gets freedom to fully take the light in to the system, this is one of the best outdoor natural photography tips that works better for natural portrait photography  

2.Higher ISO

During the basic lighting lessons that we all learn we hear that we need to lower the iso value, If the iso value is high we could let in light to our camera but in return we will find good noise in the image, but while taking natural light photos I suggest you to increase the value of ISO.

Iso is basically cameras sensitivity towards light and this is different in each camera because the camera sensors are different. If you limit the value of light while taking natural light photos you may get cleaner image but limiting your dynamic range of the camera, So take this as one of the natural light photography techniques while you take natural light photos.

I do suggest to try out the mid ranges of ISO as first then experiment on them, one of the main advantage of using this natural light photography techniques is that while taking natural light photos we will get good amount of colour range to play with while we edit

3.Limit your Shutter speed to a higher value

As we know when we shoot outside it is obvious that we move around a lot so if your shutter speed is too low then you might be getting blurry photos. So mark it as one of the natural light photography techniques while you take natural light photos.

 Keep your shutter speed above 1/400. This is an optimum range to prevent your photos getting blurry with your moment or the moment of your subject for the matter.

 This outdoor natural light photography techniques will be defiantly comes in handy while you do natural portrait photography of small kids or an unsteady subject. As a photographer who is capturing natural light photos this high limit of shutter speed will definitely help in reducing your motion blur

4.Choosing the time of the day

This could be one of the main and important outdoor natural light photography techniques that one must consider while taking natural light photos. As I said in the beginning the light of the sun is different in different time of day and changes its intensity and colours at various times so we must choose to frame accordingly

4.1 During golden hours

These are generally called as time just after sunrise and times just before sunset. Shooting in these hours is the main outdoor natural light photography techniques to follow. During this hour the light density is not harsh and the colour changes every now and then. This time of the day is best for natural portrait photography

4.2 Noon or harsh light hours

During these hours the intensity of light is too high. During these hours the vertical light of the sun and high intensity could not be avoided, this results in harsh or hard lights and high contrasts. If you are planning for a natural portrait photography this time of day is not at all suitable. But you could use open shades to reduce the effect of harsh light to some extent.

4.3 Experiment with weather

Natural light photography changes with the light changes with weather, each lighting is different in different lighting conduction, so if you are planning on taking natural light photos this could be a useful tip to improve your craft

5. Use of reflectors

Reflectors are used to reflect high intensity lights and it could be used to create an even light setting when the natural lights are bit too harsh. This is also a best tool to evenly light up the subject in the dark sides of the subject

A reflectors could be a cheap thermocol or high end reflective photography equipment’s. All the thing to consider is that it should be capable enough to reflect the coming light and spread it evenly into the subject

6. Experiment with shadows

It is fact that the natural light lights up more area than all other light. Since natural light Photography is done in open area there can be a lot of shadows in an around. Using these shadows could be a different way to control lights in natural light photos, we can find lots of examples of these kinds in natural portrait photography.

The natural shadows that’s available may or may not be adoptable for our frame so we could even create artificial ones using our own equipment of choice. These kind of modification will definitely have good effect in composing a frame outside. Some of the usage of shadows are they can create moods in the photograph, or use them to add sense of realism

Conclusion

As you could find various situations where we could use natural light photography techniques to improve taking natural light photos. The effects that these lights produce are unique and hard to duplicate artificially. As a photography enthusiast, one must learn how to use these light for the betterment of our works

The tips above are just a few of the many ways to improve your natural light photography. There is no doubt that these methods will greatly improve your overall quality and make you stand out from among other photographers.

If you want to take your photography skills to a whole new level, then you should definitely try using the tips above. They will help you create stunning photos that are sure to impress everyone around

But there is one more thing you need to know before getting started: natural light photography can be very challenging. It’s not a walk in the park, so you will have to put in some effort if you want your photos to look professional. So go out and keep shooting and I wish these tips definitely helped you to improve your work than before