Digital Photography - Windowlit Portraiture

By using the light from just one window, you can create great windowlit portraits. If you want a soft even light, use a north-facing window, however, your portrait photos can have a bluish cast to them unless you set your digital camera white balance to a shade or cloudy setting.

For a stronger lighting, choose a west or south-facing window. The light will be more directional and your portraits won't have the blue cast to them. Set your digital camera white balance setting to daylight.

Using light streaming in through a window for windowlit portraitures provides a strong directional sidelight accenting skin texture, however, many times we want to minimize the texture effect and we do that in a couple of different ways. One is toning down the light intensity by using a layer or two of sheer drapery material betwen the subject and light source. Two, move the subject farther away from the window. To further minimize the texture effect, and achieve a soft focus look, try using a diffuser filter.

Windowlit portraits come in two basic forms, posed and environmental. For posed head and shoulder portraits, use an 85mm to 105mm lens. The slight compression effect of lenses in this range provides for facial feature enhancement. For full and half-length portraits, use a 50mm lens.

The most popular sitting for posed portraits is the three-quarter profile. This results in the half of the face facing the bright light more illuminated than the other half on the far side of the light. This pose works well if the subject has a broad or wrinkled face, prominent ears or any other facial defect affecting only one side of the face. Make sure the side of the face with defects is on the less-lit side.

A variation of the three-quarter profile is the side profile. With this pose, the sidelight illuminates the half of the subject's face directly facing the light. This results in an accented texture effect and works well for a subject one would expect to have a weathered face, such as a rancher, fisherman or anyone having spent much of their working life outside in the sun.

If you are not trying to minimize facial features, the three-quarter or side profile shot can be taken as previously described or you can add light to the shadow side of the face by using a white piece of posterboard as a reflector. The amount of light reflected back onto the shadow side of the face is controlled by how close, or far away, the reflector is placed from the shadow side of the face. If you are going to add light to the shadow side of the face, you want the amount of light added to be about one-third as bright as the light illuminating the windowlit side of the face.

Frontlighting, light shining directly in the face of the subject, is better lighting for subjects having a long nose, narrow or double chin, or prominent forehead. Also, in these cases, a better pose is having the subject looking directly at the camera. This pose minimizes these features. When shooting the posed portrait, use a narrow depth-of-field, such as f4 or f5.6, so the background will blur and not distract attention away from the subject.

The environmental portrait is the second type of portrait pose. In this type of portrait, the subject is doing something and not just looking at the camera. Examples would be the subject reading a book, sewing or tying flies for fly fishing. Whatever the subject is doing is usually consistent with what people who know the subject would expect that person to be doing.

Because more of the person's surroundings are included with this type of pose, a wide-angle lens in the 28-35mm range is a good choice. A 50mm lens can be used if you have sufficient room to work. Also, with environmental portraits you want the background and/or foreground to remain in focus, so use an aperture of at least f8 or greater. The farther away the background is from the subject, the more depth-of-field you will need. Here, you don't want the background blurry because it helps tell the story.

Also, experiment with perspective. Don't be afraid to shoot from a higher or lower angle than normal eye-level position. This can result in excellent photos with a different look, thus preventing portraits that are static or boring.

Environmentals are a more pleasing type of portrait as it is visually more stimulating to see the subject doing something while being photographed rather than just looking at the camera. Finally, select a "warm" white balance setting on your digital camera such as shade or cloudy for accurate skintones.

Windowlit portraiture is an interesting type of photography to pursue on those cold winter days when the sun is shining, but it is too cold outside for digital photography. Besides, it is a good way to keep up on your portraiture photographic skills.

If you liked this article, visit our website at http://Sunlight Media for more tips and techniques.
Ron
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