How to Use Natural Light to Improve Your Photos

Have you ever wondered why some photographs seem to glow with an almost magical quality? The secret often isn't an expensive camera or fancy editing software—it's understanding how to use the power of natural light!

In this guide, we'll explore how different times of day affect your images, how the direction of natural light impacts your subject, and simple tools to modify light to achieve your creative vision. With these techniques under your belt, you'll be capturing print-worthy photos in no time!

Golden hour lighting is fantastic for portraits like this one, where the setting sun creates beautiful rim lighting around the subject’s head.

Golden Hour, Blue Hour, and Midday Light

Understanding how natural light changes throughout the day gives you powerful creative control over your images. Each period offers unique qualities that can dramatically affect the mood and impact of your photographs. Let’s explore each one to learn how to perfect your approach.

Golden Hour

The "golden hour"—those magical moments shortly after sunrise or before sunset—is widely considered the holy grail of natural light photography. During this time, sunlight travels through more atmosphere, creating a warm, golden glow that flatters virtually any subject. The light becomes softer and more directional, casting longer shadows that add depth and dimension to your images. 

• For portrait photography, golden hour makes skin tones glow. Position your subject with the light coming from the side or slightly behind them for a beautiful rim light effect that separates them from the background.

• When shooting landscapes, the low angle of the sun emphasizes textures and creates dramatic shadows that give your scenes a three-dimensional quality.

Here’s a quick tip: adjust your camera’s white balance to maintain the warm qualities of golden hour light rather than letting your camera automatically correct for it.

Blue Hour

Less celebrated (but equally magical is the "blue hour"—that brief period before sunrise or after sunset when the sky takes on a deep blue hue. During blue hour, the ambient light is cool and evenly diffused, creating an atmosphere ideal for certain types of photography.

Cities shine during blue hour as artificial lights begin to balance with the fading natural light. The cool blue tones of the sky contrast beautifully with the warm glow of street lights and buildings, creating a dynamic color palette that's difficult to achieve at other times of day.

Working in blue hour requires some technical adjustments, though. You'll need a tripod as exposures grow longer, and white balance becomes crucial to either emphasize the cool tones or balance them for a more neutral look.

Midday Light

The harsh midday sun has a reputation for being the most challenging natural light to work with, but understanding its properties can help you turn these challenges into creative opportunities. When the sun is high overhead, it creates strong shadows and high contrast that can be unflattering for portraits or overwhelming in landscape scenes.

• Midday natural light can be excellent for architectural photography, particularly for capturing details and textures. The high contrast emphasizes lines and shapes, while the consistent lighting makes it easier to balance exposure across the frame.

• For landscape photography, consider converting midday shots to black and white to emphasize the strong contrasts rather than fighting them.

Side lighting helps create drama and depth in landscape scenes like this one.

Understanding Light Direction and Shadows

The direction of natural light relative to your subject fundamentally changes the mood and impact of your images. Learning to recognize and work with different lighting angles gives you creative control over the story your photographs tell.

Front Lighting

When natural light illuminates your subject from directly in front (with the sun behind you as the photographer), you get even, flat lighting with minimal shadows. This lighting is straightforward to work with and works well for documentary photography where clarity is paramount. It's also useful for capturing intricate details in subjects like flowers or architectural elements. However, be aware that front lighting can reduce dimension and make your subject appear flatter and less dynamic.

Side Lighting

Natural light coming from the side creates dramatic shadows that reveal texture and form, adding a three-dimensional quality to your images. This directional light emphasizes contours and brings out details that might otherwise go unnoticed.

For landscape photography, side lighting makes rolling hills, rock formations, and other textures come alive. In portrait photography, it sculpts facial features and adds depth, though it requires careful positioning to ensure shadows fall attractively across your subject's face.

Backlighting

Placing your subject between the camera and the light source creates backlighting—one of the most dramatic and emotional lighting scenarios in natural light photography. Backlighting creates rim lighting (a glow around the edges of your subject), the possibility of silhouettes, and beautiful lens flare effects when managed carefully.

Backlighting presents technical challenges, though: your camera's meter can be fooled by the bright background, resulting in an underexposed subject. Use spot metering on your subject or manually increase exposure compensation. For portraits, try overexposing by 1-2 stops from what your camera suggests to properly expose skin tones.

To capture a silhouette, do the opposite—expose for the bright background and let your subject fall into shadow. Look for clean, recognizable shapes and a striking background like a colorful sunset for the most impactful silhouettes.

Using a reflector like the one shown above helps fill in shadows when creating natural light portraits.

Working with Reflectors and Diffusers

Learning to modify natural light with simple tools gives you creative control regardless of the lighting conditions you encounter. Reflectors and diffusers are affordable, portable solutions that can dramatically improve your natural light photography. Here’s how they work:

• Reflectors bounce natural light back onto your subject. They come in various colors, each producing a different effect. Positioning is key. For portraits, hold the reflector below your subject's face to fill in under-eye shadows. For side-lit subjects, position the reflector opposite the natural light source to bounce light back into shadowed areas.

• Diffusers soften harsh natural light by spreading it out. A diffuser is essentially a translucent material placed between the light source and your subject, creating the effect of a much larger, softer light source. For example, when shooting outdoor portraits on a sunny day, holding a diffuser above your subject transforms harsh, unflattering sunlight into soft, flattering illumination.

The most versatile natural light setups often combine reflectors and diffusers. For example, you might diffuse overhead sunlight while simultaneously using a reflector to bounce light back into shadow areas, creating beautifully balanced natural light that appears to wrap around your subject. Experimentation is key—play around to see how different techniques impact your images.

Make Your Natural Light Photos Pop With HD Acrylic

HD Acrylic Prints from Artbeat Studios are particularly well-suited to displaying natural light images because of our unique face-mounting process. Unlike some of our competitors who print directly onto acrylic (which results in reduced clarity), we first print your image onto premium white or metallic paper before face-mounting it to UV-resistant acrylic. This technique preserves every nuance of natural light captured in your original photograph.

The luminous quality of natural light photography finds its perfect match in our printing technology as well. Your natural light images are reproduced on high-resolution archival Metallic Photo paper using Epson archival inks, creating an iridescent appearance that actually enhances the qualities that make natural light photography special. This effect particularly complements photographs taken during golden hour, where warm tones appear to glow from within the acrylic surface.

On top of that, we offer custom sizing options since we cut our acrylic sheets ourselves. So, order an 8x8” print, a 48x96” print, or something in between to fit your vision for your natural light images. 

When you've invested time and skill in capturing perfect natural light conditions, you need a printing method that honors that dedication. Our HD Acrylic Prints don't just display your images; they elevate them, adding depth and dimension that makes viewers feel as though they're experiencing that perfect lighting moment firsthand!