Using Window Light in a Portrait

Ken Skulte explains how to use window light for a wedding portrait.

You know this portrait wedding photographers, one of the things we worked with most commonly is window light. It is a soft directional light that we can find just about everywhere. It’s my favorite type of light I’ve been working with it for many years, and I’ve got this example here where we’ve got a tree just outside the window. And that tree is actually blocking light from coming in one direction and just allowing the soft directional light to come in. In the corner, right up to the wall, good, and look over here, good. All right, Jim once you bring the fill in I will just try to light off her face. That’s it. So putting we’re kind of kicking just fill back into here face even though her face is primarily in shadow. Play it back. For you from nothing smile Anna. One of the interesting things to do when you considered detail and depth and dimension is I want to have the bride with her body turn across the window, so the light comes across the bodies of her gown. When somebody turns into the window it just kind of burns up, so we don’t hold a lot of detail. So when I moved the bride out one of the things you might see in the photograph is that I turn to face back into the window, and had the light coming across her dress. That’s one of the things that we want to do is make sure we have all the detail on the dress and the lighting can certainly accentuate that. Good, great. Take one step back in fact turn your body just a little more. Turn your face to the window. Yes, I love that, good and lift the flowers up. Good, great. He worked with Anna by the window yesterday. There comes a time we have to be a little bit decisive and knowing you have it you know when you have your shot they can, and I work toward that. There will be times where I maybe taking two and three and four exposures of something just waiting for that little tick and expression, but once I get that expression I move on to something different. I think you need to establish when you selecting areas to work in. From working via window I want to accomplish I can by the window not being redundant, but just knowing when it’s time to move on to another location.