Happy Monday everyone! I was thinking about what to share with you all today and I thought it might be fun to talk a little about why I’m so happy I got my BFA in Photography in Design and why I am constantly working to improve my abilities and grow my knowledge of this craft!

Now as most of you know, I prefer to work with natural light. I just think everyone relaxes outside in the natural beauty of the world and there’s a certain radiant quality I can achieve when using natural light that just isn’t there when working with artificial lighting. This is absolutely a preference thing! I have several friends who are photographers who create incredibly beautiful work utilizing off camera flash. I love that you can create an entirely different look by lighting this way and one of the biggest benefits for photographers who choose to use lighting is that they have far more control over what they can do and where they can. They are in complete control of the entire situation.

Call me crazy but I like working in the moment. I like the opportunity to see my clients in a setting with the natural light we have and utilize it to create these beautifully warm images that really allow the people I’m photographing to SHINE! And I’m more about capturing moments and emotions than stagnant poses. So for me, I find more flexibility when I’m not constrained by extra equipment and I can just feel the moments and document them.

However, I did go to a school that taught us all about shooting with strobes and flash and all manner of lighting situations. And I’m so glad I had that opportunity because it really helped me decide what I wanted to do and why. Even now – I continue to research and examine other ways to shoot. I think it’s incredibly important to know how to work in any situation… even if it’s not our ideal situation. And I did have one such instance occur when I am really glad I had the knowledge and means to still provide artwork for my client.

You may remember Erin from a recent senior session I shared here on the blog. Well due to the start of the school year and some time delays on the day of her session – we ended up running out of daylight quicker than I expected. I was lucky enough to get to do the first portion of her session in the studio and then when we headed downtown we still had tons of daylight. So the image you see below is shot with all natural light. This is just a simple brick wall downtown and there was a little grass patch right here in the parking lot beside it. I got my settings where I wanted them and presto – beautiful, natural light portrait.

Now by the time we got to Rock Springs, the sun was starting to go down. I knew that I was going to need a little extra light to be able to get the sharp, crisp images I was wanting. So for these I had Erin’s boyfriend, Collin, hold a simple video light about 45 degrees off to camera right. At this point we still had some nice ambient light so we just cranked the light all the way up and had Collin stand way back to give it a little fill.

Now this image is not my typical style at all, but it does create for a cool dramatic effect and since Erin is performs in St. Teresa’s dramatic performances – a little dramatic lighting makes sense 🙂 By this point it was pretty dark and the pine forest out at Rock Springs was even darker so this time I had Collin stand at 30 degrees to camera left. This created some darker more dramatic shadows across Erin’s face. So the only light in this image is coming from my little video light.

I figured while we’re playing around with different lighting, let’s just go ahead and have some fun! So for this image, I had Collin stand behind and to the right of Erin and pointed our little video light down at the back of her head, which is how we got this awesome hair light/back light/halo effect. Now if I had just had Collin behind her – she would have been completely silhouetted so I threw my flash up and had it fire some light towards her face. So this set up required two lights to achieve this glamorous look.

There are tons of other ways you can set up lighting to create really dynamic and impactful images, and I’m really pleased with what we were able to achieve with our simple lights at Erin’s session. I still prefer natural light, but I love that I have the knowledge and equipment to be able to make a tricky situation work. Plus, I fully believe that if you’re hiring me as your professional photographer – it’s my responsibility to be able to work with whatever the day throws at us.

Well I hope you enjoyed this little glimpse into the importance of lighting. Have a magnificent Monday!

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