Portrait photography tip: Make flash light look natural

Sunday 4 September 2022, 14:07 by Elja Trum | 3,748 views | 0 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

Using flash light in your photos gives you much more control over the light. Sometimes photographers think that flash light takes the atmosphere out of a photo. To prevent this, you need to make flash light look natural.

Janna, f/4, 1/125s, 100 ISO @ 50mm
But how do you make flash light look natural? You do this by paying attention to a few things.

First of all, the flash light should not come straight from the front. So not from your camera directly at the model. This gives a photo the typical 'flash look'.

Instead, you flash indirectly, for example via a wall, or take the flash off the camera and flash it at your model from the side.

Using a softbox, diffuser or that indirect light also helps. This makes the light source larger. This in turn makes shadows softer, and it quickly looks as if the light is coming through a window, for example.

Pay attention to the colour temperature too. If your light is too white compared with the rest of the photo, the viewer will quickly think of flash light. It is better to match the light to the existing light by making it more yellow or blue, using colour filters for this.

In the photo above, the light could also be coming through a window, but of course it came from a flash. The colour temperature is clearly different from the yellow lamps in the background, but it still looks natural, as if the light is coming through a window.

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