Natural light portrait photograph

Natural light portraits in Cornwall

This image was taken on a dull overcast day, where the light is just fantastic for capturing detail and texture in skin.

The image has been sharpened and highlighted in areas to increase the images depth.

Please contact me from this blog if you are interested in some natural light portrait work.

Taking time out to view your photograph collection and check you haven’t missed out on any possibilities is always worth doing. Images you have taken, may at that time not seem to be of value, but could be waiting to be edited into something special and a little different. This image of a model started life as a drab, lifeless photograph but the subject was right!

When you get inspired to work in a different style, look through your photo bank and see what images lend themselves to a re-work. I reckon you have loads of photographs that with a bit of imagination and a re-work could be out of this world. Try it today, look through all those photos and attack the ones with an interesting composition to make them new, fresh and exciting.

Natural light portrait

Outdoor model set

This was my first attempt of working with a model. It was a great day as the weather was perfect however, the conditions were changing very quickly and a lot of the photographs were spoilt due to the fast changes in the light.

The thing I had not considered was making a sound plan of images that I wanted to capture. I have always normally been led by the conditions and situations I find my self in. This was not good, I felt the model was looking for more direction from me and I learnt a very valuable lesson from this.

Plan your shoot time

If you ever have the chance of working with a model, make sure you have some strong ideas in your head. You need to work out what you are going to achive and how this will be done!!!!

Anyway, despite all this between us I got a great selection of images, 2 of which I have shared with you here.

Post capture processing

They both required an amount of post capture editing to get the feel that I wanted. The image to the left and above had bright blue sky as the back drop a few adjustment layers later and a bit of dodging and burning was required to get the effect I was looking for. I would be interested to hear and tips or ideas you might have to share with us.

Ink skies

I will write some basic tutorials over the coming months to explain in greater depth how to carry out some simple photograph editing, as well as link to some great articles and resources on the web to guide you closer to that perfect digital photograph.