You do not need a vast arsenal of expensive lighting equipment to create striking portraits. In fact, the most powerful light source you’ll ever need is free: the sun! But even with all the intensity that it provides, the sun can be a bit finicky to work with.
The big problem with working with sunlight is that you, the photographer, have no control over it. You can’t adjust the power, move it to a different part of the sky, or part the clouds to match your vision, so careful planning, and knowing how to work with whatever mother nature gives you, are essential to a successful shoot.
For a complete framework on capture beautiful natural light portraits, see our Engagement Photography 101 workshop.
Find the Ideal Light and Time of Day
find Open Shade
As a rule of thumb, avoid direct sunlight during the middle of the day when the sun is directly overhead. Anytime the sun is shining brightly, unimpeded by cloud cover, and from directly above your subject, it will create harsh, unpleasant shadows on their face. The easy fix is to get your subject into the shade! The best shady spots are often very close to the border between sunlight and shade. In some cases, to get the best light, your subject will be comfortably shaded while you, the photographer, are standing in the sun.
Even in this type of open shade, the light coming from one direction will be strongest. To identify where that brightest side will be, you can either stand in your subject’s spot, and look around for the brightest thing in view, or hold your hand up in front of you, and turn until it is most evenly lit. The primary direction of light will determine how the shadows fall on your subject, so you’ll generally want to shoot from that direction, with the light behind you, so that your subject will be evenly lit.
Photograph During Golden Hour
If you’re able to shoot during the few hours after sunrise or before sunset, it’s much easier to make great portraits with direct sunlight. During the morning and late afternoon the sun is lower in the sky, and is slightly diffused by the atmosphere. This means that we photographers can use it in a variety of ways.
The simplest way to use it is as your key, or main light. By placing the sun directly behind you, you can create what we would call “butterfly” lighting, with a small shadow directly under your subject’s nose and even lighting across their face. For best results, have your subject turn their head in the direction of the sun, and ensure that their eyes are not shadowed by their brow. Alternatively, by shifting either yourself or your subject to one side, you can create more dramatic shadows on your subject’s face, creating loop or Rembrandt lighting.
The key consideration for any of these arrangements, because the sun is such a hard light source, is your subject’s skin. Direct sunlight will expose every skin imperfection on their face, so if you’re working with someone with flawless skin, this can show it off and yield stunning results.
Keep Shooting After Sunset
Golden hour gets all the glory, but after the sun has set there is still about a 20-minute window that can yield some great shots. When the sky is still colorful but the golden hue has faded, a gentler, more subdued light exists and though it may be dim, it can be used to create some lovely natural light portraits.
To pull off a natural light, low-light shoot, you need a body which contains a sensor that allows for a fair amount of latitude in post-processing and fast glass. Some older or smaller-sensor cameras can have issues with noise at higher ISOs, and photos taken with some cameras will deteriorate quickly as you manipulate them to recover shadows in post. Fast glass will help, but the set-ups with the best results will combine both of these factors.
Find Natural Reflectors
Before you think about composing our shot and dialing in our exposure, scout the location for a suitable backdrop. To take advantage of natural light photography techniques, look for an existing light modifier in the scene, like the bright surface of a wall or building, that we can use to illuminate our subjects.
Bright white walls make for great natural reflectors and can provide ample light for your subject. Think of the wall as an oversized scrim or 5-in-1 reflector. When you happen upon such a location, all you need to do is find a position for your subject (somewhere near the wall) and take full advantage of the light bouncing off of this natural light modifier.
Use a 5 in 1 Reflector
If you’re shooting someone with less than flawless skin, it may be best to either shoot in the shade, as described above, or soften the light using a reflector. Reflectors are versatile, powerful lighting tools, and are so much cheaper and more portable than off camera lighting.
When shooting near sunrise or sunset, one fantastic technique is to turn your subject so that the sun is behind them, acting as an edge light, and use the reflector to bounce some of that light back into their face. In this scenario, the reflector is your key light, so make sure that it’s being held above your subject, to cast flattering, natural shadows.
Using a white reflector and metering for your subject’s face will amplify the effect of the back light coming from the sun, and make any shadows more subtle. A silver reflector will bounce more light, so once you’ve compensated with your camera settings, the rest of your scene will appear slightly darker.
Or, if you’re using a 5-in-1 style reflector, you can take off the cover completely and use the diffusion disk at its core to shade your subject. This essentially turns the sun from a very hard source into a much softer one. The closer you hold the diffuser to your subject, the softer the light will be. This way, you can use the sun as a key light, even if your subject’s skin has some flaws. The trick when using this method is to make sure that you don’t see the hard edge of the diffuser’s shadow on your subject. If you shoot a full body shot of someone, but your diffuser is only big enough to shield the sun from their upper body, you’ll see a line across their legs, which can be very distracting.
Place Your Subjects in The Brightest Part of the Frame
The natural lighting tip is quite simple. It’s to place your subject in the brightest part of the frame. The reasons are twofold. First, doing this will naturally draw more attention to your subjects. Second, it will also give you more flexibility when you edit. Let’s begin with how to apply this technique when shooting.
Since our eyes naturally go to the brightest spot in an image, it’s usually a bad idea to place our subjects away from it. We want to bring the attention to the couple so I placed them over the patch of open sky. See the difference and notice where your attention is naturally drawn to.
Use Hard Light To Shape and Define
Did you know that we can use the sun as a harsh, directional light, the same way we would use a flash, to create a dramatic image? While many photographers tend to shy away from using hard light in natural light portraits, you can use it to dramatic effect to shape your subject’s body. Here’s the best part: It doesn’t matter what gear you’re using to capture the shot, whether it be a professional rig or an iPhone. The key to pulling this off has more to do with how you position and pose your subjects.
How you pose your subjects will determine your level of success for using hard light to shape the body in your portraits. All of your knowledge of foundational posing will come into play here, as well as light patterns. After moving the subjects into position (in a combination open and stacked pose), I asked the female subject to turn her face slightly toward the sun, which created nice Rembrandt lighting on her face. As hand position is also important, I asked her to hold her dress with her left hand and reach back with the other hand to hold the male subject’s hand. I then asked the male subject to step slightly to his right to reduce the overlap between the subjects. Finally, I directed his gaze to create an “x” pattern between the eye direction of the two subjects, and we were ready to capture the image.
