Adding Pop to Flat Lighting

Window lighting can be some of the best natural light a photographer can use. It offers such a wide range of effects I am amazed more people don't use it. I will from time to time use window light, but sometimes window light can fall flat. Under certain conditions it just falls off so much there simply is not enough light available to effectively light the situation. It may need a little extra pop to push it into the realm of beautiful light.

One way to do this is to use an off camera speed light and a bed sheet. Combining these two things you can take the natural softness of window light and add a level of photographic refinement. Let's look at one image and see how this was done.

On the day this first image was taken, it was a dark and overcast day...rather dreary outside. The family shoot we did was all done inside, mostly using natural window light in a room surrounded by windows on all sides. There was just enough volume of light in that room so we could shoot, but I also added a bounced flash or two along the way to help out. The photo above was taken in another room that had a single large window. As dark as it was outside, the room was even more so with very little outside light filtering through the window. Now, I could have used a higher ISO or slowed the shutter down to use the available lighting, but by doing so the background in the room would also have been brighter. I really did not want that...I wanted the room to remain subdued, but the mother and child be lit.

What I did was actually rather basic. I took an ordinary white bed sheet and taped it to the outside of the window, fully covering the window. I then placed a single speed light on a stand and stood it about 2 maybe 3 feet from the window. The speed light was zoomed out to a wide area focused lighting and powered to at least 1/2 power and could have been at full power, I'm not sure exactly, but it was set to a higher output setting.

I then simply set my exposure for the background lighting insuring it would be subdued and fired the flash remotely at the camera from inside the room. What happened was this. There was still some light filtering in from the window, but the speed light shot against the bed sheet created a large diffused source of light, giving what was already there just enough pop to light my subjects without altering the look of the darkened room.

Adding a little pop to your natural lighting can enhance the image. The trick is to not overwhelm your image with too much light. Using speed lights requires a bit of imagination and a soft touch. The light provided by them should be used to enhance what is already there and your image should never look like you used an old fashioned flash cube.