articles/Portraiture/Dudeoir-page5
Published 01/06/2014
The Faux Window Light
Every photographer dreams of having a studio with beautiful southfacing windows, but even then the light can fail you at a crucial moment. It can be tempting to overthink recreating window light by using endless lights, scrims and complex modifiers, however, I usually approach this very simply with just one light.
In the shots here the lighting is the same. Is it a large, rectangular, gridded soft-box in landscape orientation suspended from a boom arm above and to the side of the model. The soft-box runs more or less parallel to their body and is as close as it can be without interfering with the shot. The grid gives a more directional light that replicates the look of light coming through a window. Of course it is pertinent to remember that window light can be hard, soft or somewhere in between so this really is a case of trying things out and seeing what works to your particular taste. These shots were all changed drastically by simply moving the model slightly in relation to the light or by changing the aperture settings.
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