How to adapt lighting when natural light is not enough

Parisian inspired fashion campaign for Sugar + Style

Today I’m sharing a fashion campaign for Sugar + Style shot in Parisian inspired flat in London. I wanted to also share some of my best tips on how to adapt your lighting when natural light is not enough. Especially when shooting inside in London as it happens so often here! And I did worry in the beginning of the shoot but I’ll share what I did to make it all work.

Team:

Brand: Sugar + Style
Photography: Ailera Stone
Stylist: Jubbi
Stylist assistant: Lucy W.
Model: Maya

Choose the most suitable location

If you have any input to what the location will be (so might not be possible if the client already chose the location on their own.) think first of all about the whole shoot’s vibe. Do you just want a clean consistent look that flash has? Then get a studio location that already has full flash lighting included and you won’t have to worry about lighting. But if you prefer a softer more natural look you get with natural light, then you will have to do some research. (Yes you could also try to re-create natural lighting with studio lights, but that’s if you are already have a lot of studio lights knowledge, as it is not easy. At least to me it usually doesn’t look the same.)

So what should you be looking for in your location? Ideally find a daylight studio that has photo examples of different times of day so you can see how much light gets in. Often they don’t have that, so then I keep a few things in mind:
1. Are the windows south based? As then you get the most light throughout the day. East/west would get light depending on the time of day. North windows of course would get the least, but it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work.
2. How big are the windows? I find that if windows are big enough (so if you see it’s floor to top windows it would be best.) and if the day is sunny, I still get great results.
3. Weather forecast – will it be sunny or not. If it will be raining, you already should know you will need help with lighting, so think of your options in advance. I do still sometimes even postpone shoots if it’s raining (even when shooting inside) as I just love natural light that much and know how much better it would look on a nice day.

Get a huge reflector

And when I mean huge, I do mean huge – mine is like over 2 metres I think. (but it packs up nicely – putting it back is an art, I swear. ;D) So in most of the photos here you see, I used this big silver reflector on the left side (because the window is on the right) to bounce back a lot of light on the model. And you need a big one if you shoot fashion and need the full outfit to get light. If it’s a portrait or beauty shoot of course smaller is fine. A good assistant really helps here – someone who sees well what reflects best on the model. (You can’t really properly hold a reflector this big yourself and I HAD tried. It won’t be as good and it’s a pain on your own.)

Just bring up your ISO. A lot.

While I did use some flash later to fill in – read on for that – if you don’t have it, the easiest thing is just to play with your settings. I’ve always really avoided upping my ISO as I hated what it looks like when it’s too much. However, newest cameras really can handle it so well now. So on this particular shoot for reference, for non earring shots I shot at around f/2 – 3.2 or so on 1/200 sec exposure. And while this studio turned out to be very small (another big factor how much light you get) and the day wasn’t sunny, it was enough to bring it up to around 1000 ISO. And it looked fine in post-production! In the end I preferred the look of higher ISO over when I filled in with flash, but that’s my personal preference.

Combining natural light with flash

Finally, something I never come to a shoot without if I’m shooting inside is my Profoto A1 flash. You just pop it on top of your camera and it can be quite powerful even if it looks small! I always try reflecting it of something white (I mostly bounced it back from the white ceiling here) to get a softer / more even flash look. See below for the results – the natural light was still coming through from the right in some. I filled in with this flash when I wanted to get a different angle or the model was deeper in the room.

My other photography tips blog posts are here, and you can see my previous commercial work here.

Let me know if you have any questions, what you think and if you have your own tips on how to adapt lighting when natural light is not enough below!