Workshop 01: Ambient portraits

Sarah Parrish is seen in front of a window in the newsroom in Franklin Hall. The natural light coming through the window presents a shadow across half of her face. Credit: Samantha Smith 

I would say overall natural light like this is my favorite to work with. It is so interesting to see what you can do with an ordinary setting and bring out something really interesting. For this picture specifically we found a window with some outside light that wasn’t directly shining in but was still illuminating the area around the area. This created just enough light to shine on half of her face but leave the other half completely in shadow. I think the line going directly down her face really gives a cool effect to the overall picture. The hardest part of this workshop was probably just working with the settings on the camera to make sure her face wasn’t completely in shadow but that it still gave the same effect.