Reply To: "Strictly" Natural Light Photographers

[ebi]

I’m learning off camera flash, because I want to know how to add dimension to my photographs and you really can’t do that unless you use lights.

This is so incredibly untrue and CC summed it up quite nicely. I won’t really expand on that.

However I would like to point out something that you may be unaware of. Allison Earnest isn’t very good (if this is her: http://www.aearnestphoto.com/). She may not be exactly a fauxtog, but her work is considerably dated. I’d say she falls under the category of “those that can’t do, teach”. I’d suggest getting your money back and looking elsewhere. Otherwise it will probably cost you more to unlearn everything she’s teaching.

It’s about controlling the light, not letting the light control you. You can’t control the sun, but you can control speedlights or OCF.

hmmm. With a few sheets of diffusion, a couple black flags, and a bounce card or two, I can control natural light pretty well. The only thing I cannot control is a lack of light, in which case, i’d use strobes. It’s actually a little more complex to control strobe light than it is to control natural light.

As for people who call themselves Natural light photographers, well, personally I just call myself a photographer. Clients really don’t care how you do something as long as it meets their needs. Strobe, sun, iphone flashlight. it’s doesn’t matter. But if you are working for a client and they want it to look like natural light and you decide to use strobe and it looks like strobe, you are going to be in trouble.