Quick Tip 05 – Natural Lighting Made Simple

The most important thing to understand about natural light is its direction. Whether it’s a bright sunny day or completely overcast, the sun is always coming from somewhere, and knowing where that is makes all the difference.

Once you’ve figured out the direction, you can decide how to place your subject. Backlighting, sidelighting, and even front lighting all create different moods.

My favorite setup is placing the sun slightly behind and to the side of my subject. It avoids the harsh contrast of full backlight while adding more depth than flat front light. In my opinion, it’s the best of both worlds.

Below are two examples of that style in action. You can clearly see the beautiful soft shadows and highlights, combined with an overall warm glow of the evening sun. Very simple, yet effective set up!

Now that we’ve covered light direction, let’s talk about when to shoot. The time of day has a huge impact on light quality, and therefore, your final frame.

What makes the examples above so pleasing is the soft, warm, low-angle sunlight. If I had shot the same scenes at midday, the result would be completely different: harsher shadows, less depth, cooler color tones, and a much more aggressive mood.

Personally, I avoid shooting at midday unless I want to use strong shadows as a creative element in certain compositions. Most of the time, I stick to early mornings or late afternoons, all the way into blue hour, for that soft, cinematic look.

And btw: My white balance settings stay the same, no matter what time I am shooting at. If you adapt your WB according to the time of day, you will loose the realistic warmth of the sun. If you want my exact settings check this post.

A quick trick for finding the right sun angle is to use your hand. Hold it out in front of you (far enough so your body doesn’t cast a shadow) and slowly turn in a circle. Watch how the light and shadows change across your hand. Once you find the angle that looks best, place your subject in the same direction, it’s a super simple way to nail natural lighting without having to move your subject around.

On overcast days, the challenge isn’t the lack of light, it’s the lack of contrast. Flat skies can make everything in your frame look dull and lifeless. One way to fix this is by adding contrast through composition.

In the shot below, I used the trees as a strong foreground element and intentionally underexposed them so they became silhouettes. This simple choice broke up the flat lighting, added depth, and made my subject stand out.

That’s it for now, more in depth lighting courses are coming soon, stay tuned!

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Thanks so much for being here, I genuinely appreciate every single reader.
If you ever have questions or ideas for future issues, feel free to shoot me a DM on Instagram!

Until next time,

Stefan

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