Natural Light Photography Tips
– The Bathroom Studio!
Does this sound familiar? You’re itching to take some portraits of the kids, and the weather is miserable. Indoors… well, the light echoes the outdoors… dark, dreary and shadowy!
In your hunt for good light in a good room… I bet your bathroom wasn’t on your radar! But do you have a lovely white or light coloured bathroom? If you have some window light you’ll notice the light walls and fittings bounces that beautiful soft light everywhere.
You can do a lot more with a lot less light in a room with that much white and tiles!
Related: Indoor Photography Tips
Time for Fun!
Run a bubble bath, throw the kids in and go for it. The bonus is what kid doesn’t love a bubble bath? It presents an opportunity for more enthusiasm from kids who’ve started to reject the lens (a universal problem among enthusiast and professional photographers alike!).
What’s more, most babies love a bath and to that end you’re pretty much guaranteed fantastic happy smiles and eye contact. In this shot there was only an inch of water in the tub and he was happy to lay back and make a splash whilst I stood directly over top and photographed down! You can see all that beautiful light in his eyes!
Colour Casts
My bathroom is white… but my 70’s bath tub is purple! This meant some of that bouncing light created an odd colour cast on the kids’ skin.
It might not be evident when you’re there in the room blissfully shooting, because colour casts can be really subtle to the naked eye. But it will be much more obvious in your photos.
For that reason, I converted all my images to black & white – that’s my editing tip!
Backdrop
You don’t need to use the bathtub for all your photos.
If you have a good expanse of blank wall in your bathroom you can simply use it as a ready made seamless white backdrop, with all the white tiles and fittings acting as natural reflectors.
Related: DIY Photography Backdrop
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Wow I never thought of my bathroom as a great canvas, I will have to break out the bubble bath and give this a try!! I’m sure my 2.5yr old will be more than happy to be my subject!!
Thanks for the tips!!
Lol, my house was built in the 50s and our bathroom features fluorescent lighting and all the original funky-color tile walls. Sadly, shooting my kids in my bathroom is a green tinted white-balance nightmare! Lucky if you have a bright, modern bathroom. Fortunately, our dining room is open with lots of pretty natural light.
Hehe you know we’ve moved since I wrote that article, and our house in the US (And actually most US houses I’ve since seen) do NOT have the big windows I’ve had in other houses… white tiles, yes, thankfully… but not so much an abundance of light! Similarly, and thankfully I have other spots too with beautiful light!