This week our focus is drawn to learning about natural and artificial light as the most integral aspect of photography. This means to be able to photograph it as well as seeing and understand it with the naked eye.

Natural Light
This refers to all variations of light from the sun, which is certainly also weather-dependant. As a larger light-source, natural light can be both soft and strong enough for a diverse range of subjects from portraiture to landscape photography. Whilst useful, its changeable nature means that it can also be difficult to harness, and can only be fixed in post production.

• 

• 

Artificial Light
Basically describes any man-made light which is usually either categorised as a flash/strobe or continuous light. The difference between the two is as such: Strobe lighting comes in a very diverse range of sizes and is thus either portable or stationary. Either way, they are extremely  powerful but are far more expensive. They assist in capturing clear action shots as the flash is synched with the shutter speed of 
Continuous, as the name describes, is any lighting that remains on before, during and after a shot is taken. The benefits of this kind of lighting is that it is very easy to modify as you can see what you are doing whilst you do it, whether this be adding attachments or just moving it around a subject. This also allows for very different creative effects such as a more cinematic look, or capturing softly blurring motion.  Additionally, importantly they are more affordable than strobe lighting.

Practical Activity
This weeks activity was comparing artificial and natural lighting. I really enjoyed seeking out natural lighting because of how unpredictable it was. It felt like more of a challenge to find beauty in the natural light whilst it moved and changed. I took the following images at the end of the day as the sun was going down with flash and without to highlight the difference between the two. Clearly there are situations in which artificial lighting is ideal, however for most of my comparisons I definitely preferred natural sunlight rather than the flash.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

The following are images were taken to further explore natural lighting outside and how it translated into a photo particularly for assessment 2. This also helped me to recognise how light acts in my eyes vs. through the camera lens before taking images for my final narrative photoseries.

• 

•