Indoor Portrait Photography

Step inside for some top tips on capturing indoor portraits using natural light.

Photographing with natural light doesn’t mean you’re limited to working outside. In this portrait photography class, Karl demonstrates a different type of natural light photography – natural light photography indoors.

One of the key things to consider when working inside is your location. Big windows are your friend but too much light can actually be a bad thing. It’s important to study the location and understand the potential benefits or problems that the room you’re working in provides.

This natural light photography example shows an at-home indoor shoot. Karl explains a number of important factors to consider, as well as how to make the most of and control available light.

In this class:

  • Portrait photography using natural light
  • Natural light photography indoors
  • How to create soft light for portraits
  • Using reflectors and negative fill to control shadows
  • Useful accessories and equipment for indoor photography
  • How to soften harsh sunlight

Questions? Please post them in the comments section below.

Comments

  1. Hi Karl,
    Thank you for making this fabulous website for us to attend! I am mostly a landscape photographer, but occasionally do portraits. Therefore I have had much pleasure of watching your series about portrait-photography in natural light. Excellent series! One question: Do you use spot-metering of the face of the models? Or do you use evaluative light metering?

    Thanks!

    Sven

    1. Hi Sven, spot metering on the face can be very useful but to be honest I’m too lazy for that I just use evaluative metering and then I check the result on the camera screen and look at the overall histogram from which I can tell if it’s in the ballpark. Also as I’m shooting RAW I know that if it’s that close then I’ve got all I need in the RAW file. All the best Karl.

    1. Excellent, glad you enjoyed it. Please let us know if you have any questions on any of the other classes.

  4. Hi Karl

    Question about Lee filters:
    Do they have their decrease in lighting and diffusion pattern completely correlated or you can choose these properties separately?
    I mean is there an option to have the same 1.5 stops of light decrease as with 216, but with less diffusion, or the opposite – is there a filter with the same level of diffusion, but without loosing 1.5 stops?

    And what # would you recommend along with 216 (1.5 stops) for 1, 0.5 stops? Their site mentions a lot of white diffusion filters with fancy names, but it’s hard to see the difference.

    Thanks!
    Alex

    1. Hi, why are you worried about how many stops of light you are going to loose? I’m not really sure why that is of the most concern to you when it comes to diffusion. The purpose of diffusion material is to diffuse the light, to reduce the hardness of some lights by making them bigger, to take away the collimating effects of some lights by scattering the light path or the most important feature is to change the image forming reflections on gloss surfaces by making the light form a gradation change rather than an abrupt edge to the light.

      As an example I have no idea at all how much loss of light my 216 diff makes as it isn’t relevant to what I’m doing as I would simply turn the light up a bit more to compensate for any light loss with thicker or thinner diffusion material. The main properties of LEE’s range of diffusion material is how much it changes the look of the light and what the spread of the light looks like from the diffusion material. I mostly use LEE 216 or LEE 400Lux for those properties and if you check out our Introduction to Product Photography you will see a more indepth class on using diffusion material. In terms of portrait photography as your comment is in this section I wouldn’t recommend diffusion material for indoor portraits (especially in small rooms) because unlike softboxes which keep the light from escaping in the wrong direction, diffusion material also bounces light backwards around a room causing problems.

      1. Thanks for the detailed answer!

        I asked my question here cause i’m interested in using filter exactly as you used it here – to diffuse the sun light on location (as a scrim), not the studio flashes.

        I really liked the result – from harsh direct sunlight you turned it into very soft, almost studio lighting.
        But what if i’d like to get something in between – like diffuse sun light a bit, but keep it as a prominent key source with mostly directional lighting. I guess i would need a thinner diffusion filter. But Lee has a lot of these neutral filters and i’m not sure what’s the difference.

        1. Hi, for what you describe then I would say that LEE 252 (eight white diff) or LEE 255 (Hollywood Frost) or maybe even something simple like the fabric for net curtains.

    1. Hi Danny, I’m afraid we don’t any more but if you contact Sara in customer support she will be able to point you in the right direction.

    1. Hi, the lens used here was an 85mm which my preferred choice for this type of photography. I think that is covered earlier or later in this course though as well as in our introduction course in our essentials section. All the best Karl.

  10. Great tutorial, Karl. Have you got tips on how to pose people that are not models? I get asked to shoot portraits for people in a similar scenario as to this but struggle with directing their positions. Do you have any go to positions as well as a video demonstrating this? Thanks!

    1. Hi, there is a video covering some of this in the portrait section but it is not something we focus in huge detail as every subject is different.

  11. Hi Karl,

    First off, thanks for all the hard work you do making these tutorials. I really appreciate your willingness to share information and ability to explain in an easy to understand manner they why behind what you’re doing.

    Specific to this course, I’m curious as to why you made the decision to shoot exclusively in portrait orientation. Was it an artistic choice, best way to limit distractions, or something else (such as family/model wanted an 8 x 10, etc.)? If it was an artistic decision, would you normally also do some landscape orientation to give the client a choice?

    1. Hi Eric, thank you for your feedback it’s much appreciated. For this particular module of this course it was for artistic reasons and due largely to other distractions around the room or location. Throughout the other modules in this Natural Light Portraiture course there are likely some horizontal compositional choices although I would say in cases where it is a vertical positioned/standing model then it is likely that I’m going to opt for vertical format orientation to maximise the scale of the model in the composition. You will notice in many of my Fashion courses that the objectives may be somewhat different, I don’t need the model to fill the frame for example as I’m trying to invoke emotion from the surroundings or set and in those cases you may see me opt for a landscape orientation more often. All the best Karl.

  12. I noticed when you added your own reflective surface vs the countertop you changed the shutter speed to 640 vs 1000 in the other shots. you did not explain why or if that was necessary.

    1. Hi, from memory i’m not sure but given that it was a natural light scene the only reason to change shutter speed would be because of a change in the exposure of the light, for example sun goes behind more cloud or less cloud, which may have been happening regularly during filming.

  13. “… don’t take an image; make an image” that is a very realistic message.

    Thank you. I appreciate the fact that you showed a comparison (at 15:41 – 15:47) for the results of a Fill, No Fill, and Negative Fill image. I really hits home from a practical stand point.

  14. where did you get that long extension arm with your Manfrotto Standard Lighting Stand? Was this a modification?

    1. Hi Paulo, I think you talking about the lastolite reflector holder arm. If you could note down at what time in the video and I will confirm.

  15. Hi Karl
    I am doing a series of photographic studies of people in their workplaces. One of these people is a therapist and having seen the room she works in, it is quite dark. There is a window though, so some natural light. I have an SLR and a couple of reflectors but no studio lights., though there is a standard lamp on location. Any tips on stopping the picture look too dark? Thanks and thanks for all the great videos.
    Tim

    1. Hi Tim, if you’ve got no lights then you need to get her near to the window and use a reflector on the shadow side if possible. Probably need a higher ISO, shoot RAW and then you can pull up other detail later. Don’t be afraid to rearrange a few things in the background to suit too.

  18. 21:20 I think the chair blocking the model’s forearm is distracting. What do you guys think?

    1. Hi Leo, I wouldn’t agree at all. The kitchen work-surface and the chair work together to form occlusion which increase the sense of three dimensionality in two dimensional photography. The image is not about the models arm it’s about her face and upper body, although of course it is always possible to improve every images, one must take an image in its overall context and emotional impact, some of the best images in the world are full of ‘technical’ faults but work perfectly on an emotional level.

    1. Hi Vincent, the sync speed with flash is 1/250th but there are no flash or studio lighting being used in this course. This is part of the course on natural light portraiture. For studio lighting portraiture see the course ‘Light Source’.

  20. This is wonderful video. I am happy because you mentioned the list of equipment used in the video.

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