Shooting with natural light

Working with natural light is not the same as not lighting. You cannot choose the source, but you can choose the time, the direction and where the subject stands in relation to it. Crews who do good work in natural light are not the ones who control the light; they are the ones who wait for the right hour.

What the hours of the day change

The hour after sunrise and the hour before sunset — golden hour — makes the light low-angled, warm and soft. Faces light easily, shadows are long and directional.

At midday the sun is overhead. Eye sockets stay dark and a hard shadow falls under the nose. If you must shoot a portrait outdoors at that hour, take the subject into shade, or put their back to the sun and fill the face with a bounce.

The twenty or thirty minutes after sunset — blue hour — is when the whole sky becomes one large soft source. Cold, diffuse, very low in contrast. For melancholy scenes it is a light that is hard to match.

Cloud is the best diffuser

Overcast weather is usually treated as bad luck, when for portraiture it is often ideal. Cloud cover turns the sky into an enormous softbox: shadows soften, skin looks smooth, exposure stays constant for hours.

The price is a loss of direction. Because light comes from everywhere the image can flatten. Take the subject beside a wall or a tree so that light is cut from one side, and direction returns.

Colour temperature and consistency

Morning and evening light is warm, while areas in shade are blue because they are lit by the sky. In the same frame you can see a warm face against a cool background. This is not a mistake — it is often beautiful — but if you do not lock white balance every shot comes out different and will not cut together.

Do not leave white balance on automatic when shooting in daylight. Pick a fixed value and record it through the day; you can give the grade whatever warmth you want later.

Continuity is the biggest risk

If you shoot a scene over two hours the sun moves. Light that came from the side at the start of the scene comes from behind at the end, and the shots will not cut together.

The solution: build the scene facing the direction where light changes least, shoot the critical close-ups first, and wait out passing cloud. Waiting is always cheaper than fixing.