Hey everyone. Sorry about the last of posts last week. Things have been crazy around here with the new year, and getting everything ready for the workshop. I can’t believe it’s less than 2 weeks away!!! We added a few more seats to the workshop, so it’s not too late to register. Click here to register for the workshop, and learn your camera in a small group hands on setting with me!

The last few lessons have dealt with light and window light.  Today we will talk about directional window light, and how it changes the look of your photo.

I hope to get some better examples up here soon, but the last week has been so foggy here, it’s been great for outdoor photos, and diffused window light photos, but not so much for the demonstration I wanted to show you here.

The amount of light, and quality of light all change the look of your photos.  But so does the direction of the light.  In today’s lesson, you will see, how by just shifting yourself to get a different angle of light, it will change the mood and look of your photo dramatically.

I used my handsome model for this exercise (and Brian is going to be very embarrassed that I said that! And no, I didn’t pose him, he did this on his own. This is Brian, Mr. GQ himself! )

My camera settings were:

• Exposure: 1/40 sec
• Aperture: f/4.5
• Focal Length: 46.0mm
• ISO: 1250
• Flash: Flash did not fire
• Lens: 18.0-200.0mm f/3.5-5.5

Ok so let’s look at the above photo. For this photo, Brian is facing the window light.  I am between him and the window (with my back to the window) and slightly lower than him so that I’m not blocking the light. So the light is hitting him almost directly head on. It’s a nice exposure, his face is lit up nicely, but it’s kind of flat. Shadows add dimension to a photo, and interest.  Depending on the mood or emotion you’re trying to capture in the photo depends on the amount or depth (or darkness) of the shadows that you’d like.

Now let’s look at another photo angle.  Taken at the same time, just different angle.

My camera settings were:

• Exposure: 1/40 sec
• Aperture: f/4.5
• Focal Length: 46.0mm
• ISO: 1250
• Flash: Flash did not fire
• Lens: 18.0-200.0mm f/3.5-5.5

My camera settings as you can see are exactly the same.  All I did was move myself away from the window and around to the right (and Brian turned his face slightly).  He is no longer facing directly into the window light, but he turned his face slightly to the left away from the window.  As you can see in this photo, the shadows add a bit more interest and depth to the photo.

For this exercise I kept the settings on my camera exactly the same, so you could see how a shift in angle to the light can change the look of the photo.  This photo is a bit darker than I would have liked, and I probably would have dropped my shutter speed down a bit if I were taking this photo for myself. But this allows you to see how just by shifting your angle, the way the shadows hit your subject changes the look and depth, and interest of the photo.

And finally, some even deeper shadows, for a more dramatic look.

My camera settings were:

• Exposure: 1/40 sec
• Aperture: f/4.5
• Focal Length: 46.0mm
• ISO: 1250
• Flash: Flash did not fire
• Lens: 18.0-200.0mm f/3.5-5.5

Brian did not move the direction of his face in this photo, I just moved even more to the right.  This made the shadows on his face in even more more contrast to the lighter areas that were lit up by the window.

Had I moved even further to the right he would have been almost completely in silhouette.

The only way to accomplish this look with your camera is to turn it on Manual (so that you are controlling the settings) and turning off your flash. If you have your camera on “A” mode or “AP” mode you camera will read all the light coming into the lens, and depending on the angle you’re shooting from, will either be too dark (because it’s seeing all the light from the window behind Brian), or too light (because it’s seeing all the shadows and trying to balance them)

At the workshop we will talk more about controlling your camera on manual mode, and gaining confidence in doing so.  Knowing what your camera’s light meter is, and how to use that on manual mode to get the look you want with your photos.

Now that you’d seen the difference that the direction of light changes a photo, play around with it.  Take photos of your kids playing by a window.  See how when you photograph them from different angles the photo depth, emotion and over all feel changes.

Again, if you have ANY questions, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment below.  I know I’ve heard from so many of you how much you are enjoying these posts, and learning together!

I can’t wait to meet many of you on the 23rd and really dig deeper into these lessons and really see what you all can do with your cameras!!

If you want to share photos from this or any of the exercises, please send them to workshops@jenstewartphotography.com

Enjoy playing with light!!!