Taking Great Window Light Portraits

Taking great photos of the people in your life is a skill that every photographer needs to master to consider themselves an all-rounder. Does this mean you need to learn how to use studio lights with great big softboxes or flashguns with umbrellas? Of course not!

Every house comes equipped with enormous softboxes – your windows! This week we’re going to show you how to take wonderful portraits of your family and friends with very little specialist equipment, so you can create your own prints onto canvas without the cost of a professional photo shoot.

Essentially, a softbox used with studio lights is a big rectangular box of light with a diffuser that you can control and move around to create the effect that you wish to capture. Of course, you can’t move your windows around in the same manner but the principle is still the same – a big rectangular box of light!

Shoot on an overcast day and allow the clouds to diffuse the sunlight for a soft and dreamy portrait.

On a sunny day you can use net curtains or a white sheet over the window to diffuse the light.

Allow the hard light of the sun to hit your subject and create an edgy portrait with sharp shadows on both the subject and background.

Shoot through window blinds for that classic and atmospheric ‘film noir’ look.

The technical stuff

There are a few potential disadvantages to shooting with window light over controlled studio lights, but we’re going to turn those into advantages! Natural light means that we have to up our ISO settings and shoot with slower shutter speeds than with studio lights, so make sure that you balance those properly. If you have a quality DSLR or CSC you’ll have more scope to increase your ISO without impacting image quality, but if you find that you’re struggling to capture sharp images put your camera on a tripod or monopod for stability.

Be prepared to practice to find the sweet spots for your particular set-up, but once you have you’ll be able to shoot lovely portraits very quickly with little set-up and without the presence of big lights and softboxes – both of which can make people nervous.

Watch your backgrounds. If you can find a window with a blank wall at 90° to it you can use that for a simple uncluttered background, but if that’s not possible don’t worry. Just incorporate the window and surroundings in the shots and turn your images into environmental portraits.

We hope this article encourages you to try your hand at simple window light portraits – the results could make brilliant family gifts when printed onto canvas, or simply a great set of canvas wall art for your own home.