Natural portrait photography lighting tips :

 

1). Shoot with soft light when available:

Soft lighting is ideal for most outdoor portraiture styles.

Any subject will appreciate this. But when is light considered “soft”? The good news is that the sun is low on the horizon during Golden Hour (the hour between sunrise and sunset),resulting in mellow lighting.

Cloudy or overcast (even rainy) days can also provide soft light since the clouds function as a natural diffuser/soft box.

2). Position the subject with soft light on their face:

It’s not often that you want to face someone with the sun in their face, but it won’t be blinding if you do so in ideal lighting conditions.

Take advantage of this because the natural and soft light on their faces will serve as an ideal target for focusing your camera, resulting in extremely high-quality and sharp photographs.

This procedure also typically results in a natural shine, which is quite attractive.

3). Position the subject with harsh light behind them:

Backlighting is a wonderful strategy when filming in less-than-ideal settings, such as in the middle of the day.

Surprisingly, we’ve shot some very excellent shots like this before.

Some portrait styles, particularly those created by photographers who want a bright and airy aspect, may even prefer this type of lighting.

These are the 3 primary approaches we take to lighting our portrait subjects naturally:

We will consciously seek for the best light in some locations, such as a wooded region with streaky light, to make our photographs seem as nice as possible.

This could mean avoiding a particularly intriguing position (such as the side of a lake) where the results will be less than ideal due to the light, and instead opting for a simpler location with higher quality 

 

 

 

 It’s worth noting that there are numerous tools available to improve light control. For example, a light reflector disc can be used to fill up shadows on a person’s face organically using sunlight.

This is a simple and inexpensive approach that produces great-looking images without the use of artificial-looking flash.