DIY Family Portraits

Taking Photos from Non-Traditional Light Sources

Before I start on this post, I want to reiterate the fact that I am NOT a professional. I am simply sharing what I've learned and what I'm doing to get the look of the photos that I take. In this post, I'm talking about working with unique light sources. Most new photographers use natural outdoor light or their on-camera flash to take photos. There are many other creative ways of using light for photographs.

In the photo above, the sun is still the light source, but it is not being used in a traditional way. We used the evening sun (which was not pouring into the window, but coming from a direction where there was no window). This created enough light so that the window would be illuminated, but would not cast too much light on us, the subjects. I turned the shutter speed up higher than I normally would for an indoor photo, around 1/100th of a second. I kept the aperture low, about 1.8, because I did not want the background to be distracting (the room was pretty messy). I also kept the ISO low, about 100, because I did not want a large amount of light in the photo and, since the photo is very dark, I did not want it to look grainy.

This cute family photo (totally not perfect, but still fun) was created using several light sources. The two that were intentional were the speedlight that sat on top of the camera and the flashlight on our cell phones. Yep, that was all of that craziness is. We turned on the flashlights on our iPhone 5's and my dad, left, and my husband, right started drawing. I did want to do this with sparklers like I had done in the past, but we didn't have any and I didn't want to run to Walmart on the 4th of July. So...we improvised. This wasn't difficult to create. I could have drug my mono-lights and softboxes outside, but this was easy and fun. We wanted it to be fun, not work. I'll list the steps used to create this photo below.
1. Set camera on a tripod.
2. Use a timer or a remote (long shutter speeds will cause visible camera shake).
3. Set your camera to manual or shutter priority, S on a Nikon. I used manual and a shutter speed of anywhere from 3 to 8 seconds for all of the pictures we took.
4. Use a flash. If you're doing this outdoors your camera flash might not be enough, I learned that when I did this before with sparklers. You only need the flash if you want to see the people in the shot. If you just want to see the light drawing, forget the flash.
5. When the flash fires, make sure that you're posing the way you want to look in the shot. As soon as the flash goes off begin drawing, trying to finish in time for the shutter to close.

The photo above might not look like the lighting situation was unique, but it is not something that I normally do. I usually have a whole studio set-up for newborn photos, but that was not an option for this photo. I combined natural light and the flash from a speedlight to create this picture. My husband's grandmother made the throw and I still had it at my parents' house (luckily). I made the hat about a year ago for another newborn and it was also at my parents' house (really lucky, I live three hours away). We used a couch cushion and curved newborn pillow (don't know what they're called, but the mom happened to have one) to get the pose. Since the light was low, I turned the ISO up to about 200 and switched the aperture from 1.8 to 2.8 to get a blurry background, but didn't want to get it too wide to make the face out of focus. Since the baby didn't move much, I moved the shutter speed from 1/60th of a second to 1/90th of a second depending on the changing light. We opened a door, and I bounced the flash off of the walls, moving it when I moved and when the light changed.

It can be difficult to learn to work with lighting situations that are not ideal, but sometimes something creative an beautiful can come out of it. Thanks for reading! Please leave comments and let me know if you would like for me to do more in-depth, step-by-step tutorials on how to achieve these shots. More posts to come soon!