Natural Light Photographer

Flash vs natural light photography.

Often I’ll come across a photographer website in which the photographer proudly proclaims, “natural light photographer.” The first thing that comes to mind is that I’ve never seen a website proclaim, “artificial light photographer” or, “I use flash only.” So, why would they proclaim the the paradigm within which they are willing to work? Or, is it more accurate to say, the paradigm within which they are capable of working?

To be honest often times I think it’s the latter. Why else would one shout out to the world that they only shoot in natural light? What benefit is there to it? There is no benefit except to perhaps let people know from the beginning your limitations.

With photography you absolutely need light to make a photograph. If the available light is sufficient for what you’re trying to accomplish then, yes, go with available light. However, there are times in which the available light just isn’t sufficient. There can either be not enough light or the light is just not the right kind of light. In that case, you have to take control and make your own light, as it were.

On many of these websites proclaiming to be natural light photographers only, if you read through their information they will sometimes talk about the “natural” quality of available light and because the aesthetic of so called “natural” light is so uniquely awesome, they choose to shoot only in natural light. It makes my head spin. They will typically go on to then point out that, since they shoot natural light only because it’s so uniquely awesome, that when booking photo sessions with them, be aware that you’ll need to have the photo shoot either early in the day or late in the day because midday sun sucks.

Midday sun does suck by the way. But it can be dealt with a number of ways: scrims, reflectors, flash, etc.

The point is that for many of those who proclaim to be “natural light only photographers,” the reason is that they can’t use flash. Whereas I bet that most photographers who heavily use flash can and do show competence with natural light.

Granted there are types of photography in which using flash isn’t really feasible; documentary or street photographers, or press photographers, etc.  I mean, can you imagine the press pool at a presidential daily press briefing with a bunch of flash going off? Also, with today’s digital sensors, the circumstances you can work in without adding light is pretty amazing.

But at the end of the day instead of limiting oneself to being a “natural light” photographer it would be best to simply be a “photographer” and learn to do what needs to be done to be able to take good photos in as many different circumstances as possible; including becoming competent in using artificial light.

 

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