WHAT!?!? Professional Lighting - for Free - My Top 3!

These 3 images all look "pro."  

Which were shot with expensive professional lighting and which were shot with (FREE) natural light?

Did you know that cameras are really just light recorders!?!

 If you have great light, even an inexpensive phone camera can take amazing pictures!  ...of other people or selfies!

In my career I have to find  or create GREAT light 100% of the time. 

There are places where natural light is almost ALWAYS great - these are my top 3 places to find great light every time!  You are probably near at least 2 right now.  If you shoot in these places, your images are more than half way to looking pro!  

... 'cause a camera is just a light recorder.

Transcript

Images have the power to transform us. Great visual storytelling through photos, video, design and sound, have the power to move us from logic and reasoning to an emotionally driven state. Our behaviors and actions, especially as consumers, are driven by emotion. This makes the visual branding the most powerful tool in your marketing machine. 

My name is Alec Watson. I'm a visual branding specialist. I've worked with brands ranging from pop stars to presidents had an unusual career that started with gold and platinum records and music production, and moved on to my first love of photography and filming. I'm excited to learn with you from business luminaries I work with look up to and admire. I want to make a difference in your life by raising the power of your visual brand. In 321 

Hello, welcome. Thank you for joining me on the your visual brand show. My name is Alec Watson. I'm a director of photography. And today we are going to my wheelhouse rather than talking about something esoteric with visual branding, which is always helpful. We're going tactical 

Today, we're gonna talk about natural light, and the top three ways you can use and find natural light taking way better photos, natural lights, so good, it will kick butt on really expensive studio lights. And that's exciting for all of us that are either on a budget or more so worried just happened to be photographing with our iPhones, we want to take a selfie for either marketing or our social feeds. And we want to get a great shot. And we're kind of under the impression that it needs to be really expensive. And I promise you, with these three ways you can get amazing photographs.

Because here's the reality. Cameras are just a recorder. And what do they record, they record light. If you give a camera, good light, you'll get a great photo. And this is true of whether you're shooting with an iPhone or mobile with like, you know, if you want a decent mobile, there is a limitation somewhere on the camera. But with a decent mobile these days, you can get amazing photos all the way to you know if you're shooting with a mid format Hasselblad you feed it great light, you're going to get a great image. So where do you find the light. We'll do a countdown on this today. So we'll start at number three. My number three way to find great light is to always backlight what is what is that backlighting, well, that is putting the sun behind your subject. 

Oftentimes, you'll find, you know, especially that midday sun, I live up north. So midday sun is generally lower in the sky pure listening around the equator, I'm sorry, there's no real solution for this, because the sun is actually right above you. But for anybody in one of the hemispheres, the sun will either be slightly to the south or slightly to the north. And you just want to put that behind your subject, it's going to give you a fantastic hair light, light them up with a glow around them. And here's the bit that most people don't understand is that there is another source of light other than the sun. And that is the sky around. So if it's a blue sky day, when the sun is behind the person that you're photographing, you get the light on their hair, but their face is lit up by the blue sky. If we were in a studio, the equivalent of that is a giant giant softbox.

Of course, what's a softbox that's kind of that big box you see in the photo studio, when we're setting up lights, a great big soft box with a powerful strobe in it that costs a lot of money. You know what blue sky is free, there's a thing called White Balance. And there's gonna be a tendency for your subjects to be a little bit blue from the blue sky. But auto white balance on cameras these days is really pretty darn good. It's going to correct for that give you a good skin tone instead of a blue skin tone, and incredible background light. And it is honestly the easiest fix if you're going to photograph and there's harsh light, just get your subject to turn away from the light and photograph them the other way around. Related to this is I could have almost made this a top five, but these two are so related, because it's the same technique. Here's the advanced version of this, rather than just going oh can you turn away from the sunshine so the sun shines on their back. What you want to do is have a look around you See what the sunshine is bouncing off up. And this is kind of the next level trick, which is going to make all the difference. This is where you actively search for something that the sun is bouncing off of, on a movie set, there will often be some kind of white truck around. And in a pinch, if you need to bounce some sun back, rather than setting up a great big reflector, again, which you would spend money on, you just look for something that the sun is going to bounce off of. And invariably, there is a wall somewhere. 

Something that I use very often this sounds kind of weird. If I'm at a house, and the sun is shining on the house, so like it's a southern exposure house, it's looking south, probably has garage doors, I will go and I will stand with my back to the garage doors, because now I've got a giant white reflector behind me or sometimes, you know, garage doors are cream that give us a nice warm reflection on to a skin tone. And you have the person stand right in front of you. And they don't have much of a view, they feel like they're just looking at a garage. But for us, with the sun, lighting up the back of their head, the back of their hair they get they get this halo, and we're standing with our back to a garage door or a wall with light bouncing straight out of them. Man, it looks fantastic. It looks like studio light, it is an awesome way to get a photograph in a pinch, it'll work for an iPhone, like this is a great mobile trick, by the way, and you're going to get amazing images. 

This takes me to my number two technique to find free, natural available light. So you can take fantastic pictures. This one goes out to all the selfie takers. When you are inside a house. inside a building, you've got to take a selfie. And you know, we all have to take selfies at some time or another. The quickest and easiest way to find good light is to head towards the window, get your camera up right in front of the window, take a picture of yourself. There's two things that are going on here that might not be quite so obvious as to why the lights so good. 

I mentioned when we started out about lighting ratios, well, there's something that happens in in a window. That doesn't happen if you're just outside. And that is the ratio between the the big front light and the backlight. Now, this technique definitely works best on non sun facing windows, I was gonna say south facing windows. But if you're listening in the southern hemisphere, that would be North that's confusing. 

So you basically you don't want to look into the sun, you want to find a window that's either looking out on to cloudy skies, cloudy skies are great for this because again, you get this huge softbox in front of you. And the cool part of this ratio is that whatever is behind you, is now getting darkened by the room. So you get a really great contrast the shot. This is a fantastic way also to get good black and white shots. 

If you need a black and white shot, and you're photographing somebody, for some reason, if you get your back to the window, and they're standing right in front of you looking into the window, and you are shooting into the building, you'll get great light there front lit by a huge softbox. And then there's a thing in in film and photography we call negative fill, it goes back to the question, how's it working for you. And what does that mean? It means there's there's stuff sucking up the reflections of light. And this happens inside a building.

So all those non white surfaces, they start absorbing light around your subject, the light will fall off to the sides. If I were to make a light design, in turn a light design means like I'm setting up lights in a studio, it's actually quite difficult to get a really great feel that will look like this without setting up a whole bunch of lights. You get this for free just by standing with your back to the window to take a photograph of somebody or if you're taking a selfie by putting your phone right up at the window and shooting back at yourself. Totally simple way to get an amazing look for a photo and again, it's free. Doesn't seem like that's where you would find the light. But once you know, you know so that would be my number two way. Heading for number one. 

My absolute favorite place to take photographs of people in natural light is in a doorway. Similar to that idea of number two of negative fill Film means surfaces that are sucking up light. a doorway is fantastic for this door is fantastic for a bunch of reasons. Let me let me design you an image in your head while you're listening here. I will open the door, I'm going to stand outside with my camera. And I will get to my subject to stand in the doorway and just lean a shoulder against the door. 

This does something really cool right off the bat, it gives some it gives your subject something to do with their hands. And this is a problem for a lot of people. If you were to like my first example where I said you could you could stand in front of a garage door, and then the person stands in the driveway, you'll get great light that way. 

The downside of that is it feels kind of awkward for that person, they're standing in the middle of the driveway, looking at a garage door, it all looks and feels kind of weird, you're going to get great light. But there's a weirdness about that. The doorway picture is the opposite. People feel very comfortable standing leaning up against the doorway, it's something we almost do naturally gives us something to lean against. 

That gives us something for our hands to do. And it feels body language very comfortable. So if you've got somebody who's not comfortable being photographed, this is a great place to photograph them. So if you need just like simple headshots for a website, or you've got some kind of social media promo to do with somebody, a doorway, when somebody is uncomfortable on camera is an excellent place for them, it's going to put them at ease very quickly. 

The next part that's great about the doorway is that negative fill idea, the light gets sucked up in a doorway really quickly. Usually a doorway, doesn't have reflective surfaces right behind it, a doorway opens up into a space, the space tends to be small. And so the light is channeled from the doorway, and it doesn't reflect in on the person. So this is kind of a that's kind of a long winded way of describing the fact that they're kind of in a tunnel. Generally, generally speaking, they're in a light tunnel. 

And this has a cool look to it in terms of lighting ratio. They're they're heavily frontlit by a very soft light, and that works fantastically well. Now I will add on this that in a doorway, I do like to use a reflector, but the reflector that's one of those pop up things, it doesn't have to be one that you would buy you can find lots of things that will work as a reflector and what what's the job of a reflector, it's just to put a catch light in somebody's eyes, just just some sparkle in their eyes. And there's lots of ways to do that all the way from an iPhone flashlight if you just got to get a little sparkle in their eyes. 

If you want something softer, a white piece of card, a piece of a piece of paper, like a white sheet of paper by your camera or your phone, it will put a white reflection into your person's eyes. They're standing in the doorway. It gives a really fantastic quality of light and a quality of body language for them that super comfortable. So in a pinch, man, the doorways are amazing places to photograph somebody they would be my absolute number one go to have the images I shared for this podcast asking which were the expensive light versions and which were the natural light versions. 

Well on this one, all three of those images are natural light alley on the left which some of you may know as young Telly from Firefly lane, photographed her in a doorway for film that's coming out. didn't have time to set up lights on set we could only pull her off of set really quickly. So what was my go to my go to is my number one go to every time a doorway because I know I'm going to get great light. Incidentally the light that day I was standing out in the rain it was pouring you would you would think there was no light. But a cloudy day is always way brighter than interior light. And you get this really great softbox effect. So it looks like an expensive studio softbox shot. 

It's not it's simply a doorway. second image in a Mara. That's a photograph that is window light at sunset. There's something about window light at sunset, that's better than even just outside light. I believe it's the fact that a window is actually reflecting some of the sunset back so it reduces the power of that sense. That, you know, sometimes it's sunset, you can kind of look towards the sun, well through a window, and especially if it's frosted in some way, it reduces the sun a whole lot more, I believe this window had some kind of reflective material on the outside of it. And so she was able to look pretty much directly towards the sun, and ended up with a really striking image that again, totally free light there for the taking was just sunset streaming through a window, my back is towards the window, I am taking the shot. 

The number three shot of the bride, that's just a friend of mine that I photographed at her wedding. It was cherry picking that shot. She just happened to be standing in a doorway sliding glass doors. The sun was indirect, it was not coming in. There was a balcony and light was bouncing off the glossy tiles on the floor in front of her. And wow, it was poppin hot. But man, it looked fantastic. 

It looks like really expensive studio light. And like I came up with some interesting shapes. Sometimes we call them cookies like things that you put in front of lights to make interesting shapes to give it that film noir look. Well, in this case, it just happened to be chairs. The dining room table was giving me that interesting look, all three of these images, were totally free for the taking. If you'd have been there with an iPhone, you they got almost the same photograph or I could have photographed it with an iPhone, they would have looked almost identical. Cameras don't take the photos, cameras just record light if you can find the good light. And these are three fantastic places, you're just about always going to find great light, you are going to net great images, whether it's for marketing, for social media, even for campaigns. One of those is an actual campaign image that got used and I had all the gear in the world at my disposal, but we just went with window light.

 If you're finding the your visual brand podcast helpful to your social media or you know somebody in business or marketing who's got a side hustle, we can raise the value of their brand by giving them outstanding opportunities to create great visual branding. So I ask that you please share this with them make their day and it would make mine as well. 

I would love it if you could leave me a review and especially five stars that would also make my day and feel free to reach out to me on instagram dp Alec Watson and feel free to email me Alec at your visual brand comm with your questions, things you would like answers to on visual branding. I am happy to help out together when we put things together for our social feeds when we're trying to make people's lives better with the products and services that we're promoting. We are making the world a better and more beautiful place. So get out fill up those feeds with beautiful things.