From the course: Douglas Kirkland on Photography: Natural Light Portraiture

Course highlights

(upbeat music) - I'm Douglas Kirkland and I'd like to welcome you to our series on photography. Today I'm gonna be talking about portraits done with natural light. We're gonna take you behind the scenes and let you see our process, as we work with Natalie. One of the first things I do when I go to a location, is I look at the natural light. I look to see what's there and I will only modify it as necessary. There's a naturalness about this light. It has all the elements. The lights come slightly behind but then it's reflecting off this white wall back behind Natalie's face. All those elements, they're creating an image. I love to watch natural light, as this is, because it's ever changing. We also help it by having a device like this, which gives us this beautiful soft light. I'm shooting it 2.8 at 500 right now. On 100 ISO. And you get images like this. This is the image I fall in love with. I love it, because again, there's a single light that we had to place where you get this nice cheekbone effect. And of course, the magic in the eyes. This is where the magic of photography comes from, especially photography that I care about, made with natural light. (upbeat music)

Contents