Using Window Light | Teach Me Tuesdays

I’ve been MIA and I am so sorry! We’ve been sick, traveling, sick, celebrating birthdays…oh, and sick. 🙁 But I promise to be posting more of these!

This is a very simple and easy tutorial for using window light while shooting indoors. Its basic so if you’re a seasoned pro you may want to skip this ;).

The key to a good photograph is always good lighting. With winter coming up why not learn to use the light in your house? Even make your own backdrops to hide the fact you’re at home. 🙂 Look around your house, do you have any north/south facing windows? These are going to be your best friend. They let in indirect awesome sunlight that is perfect for shooting with almost all day long.

I took these photos in March. We were still in CO and the weather was cold. I was getting cabin fever big time so I bribed the boys with hot chocolate and they let me photograph them for about 5 minutes….and now they’re some of my favorite photos of them!

Here is my living room (please ignore the nasty green couch…its getting reupholstered)…the only items I used were 2 chairs, a black fleece blanket and my camera. I had the boys sit about 2 feet away from the blanket angled 45 degrees away from the window to help create nice shadows. I sat with my butt up against the window sill by the vent and shot with my 50mm f/1.4. I shot the images between 1.4 and 2.0 to help create that nice blurry fall off. This helped hid any textures in the blanket and made my post processing much easier.

Once I got them into photoshop all I needed to do was burn in the blacks and add a little pop. Done!