Photographing Children Using Window Light
Photographing children using window light is a great idea since a big window is a fantastic source of soft, directional, natural light. On a bright sunny day the indirect light through the window creates very pleasing lighting contrast that is very suitable for portraits taken indoors. Unlike a shaft of light shining through the window early or late in the day, indirect window light is the ambient light easily available through most of the when it is bright outside. That is not the best time to take an outdoor portrait in the sun but it is a great time for an indoor photo session. Light and shadow makes a two dimensional picture appear three dimensional and lifelike. The indirect light through the window on a bright day is a medium light source. Medium source light falls in between large source lighting which is shadow less and flat and small source lighting which casts hard shadows – quite unflattering for most portraits and especially portraits of kids. I was working from home on a summer day, when during the lunch break I decided to grab my camera and have a mini photo session. I placed my toddler son on the couch that is sideways to the large bay window in the living room and went through a few shots. The photo session lasted a few minutes only. As you know it is not easy to get a toddler to be a complying model for a much longer time.
Here are the tips about photographing children using window light that I can share based on that photo session:
- Soft lighting contrast – as mentioned before, natural indirect light through the large window created the ideal lighting contrast. There are no hard shadows. Make sure you don’t have a direct beam of light coming through the window during your photo session.
- Directional lighting – The light is shining from the side and gradually decreasing in a pleasing way across his face. So make sure you are not having the frontal or back lighting. If you have frontal lighting, both sides of the face will be equally lit and the photo will appear flat. If you have back lighting, it is very likely the face will appear darker and background will be way too bright and distracting.
- Shallow depth of field – Sounds technical but easy to observe the impact. If you notice, the focus is crisp on his eyes but even within the small distance between the planes of the eyes and the ears, focus falls appreciably. Little kids have big expressive eyes and in close shots like this, that’s where the emphasis should be. I achieved this by shooting wide open (f 1.4 on 85mm lens) and manual focusing. At this shallow depth, focus must be spot on. A bit of practice with a DSLR which allows spot focusing should be great. If you don’t have such a camera / lens system, don’t worry. Make sure the eyes are in focus and you will still have a shot that you will love!
- Uncluttered background – By framing tight I got rid of everything around him, because I wanted a close up portrait, with emphasis on the eyes. The only thing is the couch behind his head, which is blurred by shallow depth of field.
- Color harmony – Just like hard lighting contrast, hard color contrast is unsuitable simply because it distracts from the intimacy of close up portraits like these. Luckily the couch color matched the warm color scheme. But I changed his dress to harmonize the warm tones.
- Prop – In a longer shot, I used one of his toys as a prop, taking care the color of the toy does not upset the color harmony of the shot. If you are using a toy as prop, please use something that goes well with the shot. It does not have to be the most favorite toy, for then the purpose of the shot is different. It should not be too big or too small and not be of a distracting color.
Hope you will have fun photographing children using window light, now that there is plenty of sunshine around. Please send me your comments or questions. I would love to hear from you!
