Turn the Overhead Off and Go to the Window
Okay. Last lesson we talked about why your photos come out wrong, and I said it's usually the light, not the camera. This lesson is the practical part. What do you actually do about it.
Here's the thing. Most people take pictures wherever they happen to be standing. Kid does something cute at the kitchen table, you grab the phone, you shoot it right there under the overhead light. And then you look at the photo later and everybody's got weird yellow shadows under their eyes and the whole thing looks a little sick. That's not your kid's fault and it's not your phone's fault. That's the light bulb's fault.
Overhead lights, especially the regular bulbs or fluorescents most of us have in kitchens and living rooms, throw light straight down. It hits the top of a face or the top of an object and does nothing for the rest of it. And a lot of bulbs have a color cast, this dull yellow or sickly green, that your eyes barely notice because your brain corrects for it automatically. Your phone doesn't correct for it nearly as well. So you get a photo that looks nothing like what you thought you were seeing.
I learned this one the hard way with a baby quilt. Spent a whole evening trying to photograph it under my kitchen fluorescents, dead set on getting it done that night. Every single shot came out this sickly green, like the quilt had a fever. I fussed with it for an hour. Next morning I carried the whole thing into the front room, laid it near the window, and got a good shot in two tries. Two tries, after a full evening of nothing. I don't skip that step anymore.
What to actually do
- Turn off the overhead light. Not dim it, off. Even a little overhead light will fight with the window light and give you that same mixed, muddy look.
- Find a window with good light. Doesn't need to be direct sun blasting in. Actually, direct sun through a window can be harsh and give you hard shadows. Softer, indirect light, like a window that's not catching direct sun but is still bright, is usually your best bet. North-facing windows are reliably good for this if you know your house's orientation. If you don't, just pay attention to which window is bright without being blinding.
- Turn your subject toward the window, not away from it. This trips people up constantly. If the person or the object has their back to the window, the window is now behind them and you're photographing a silhouette. Face them toward the light.
- Get close enough that the window light is actually doing something. Six inches back from the wall doesn't count. Get your subject right up near that window.
- Take a few, from a couple different distances and angles. Light shifts fast, especially morning and evening. What worked two minutes ago might not work now.
Morning and evening light tends to be softer and warmer than harsh midday light. If you've got the flexibility, that's when I'd shoot. Not always possible, I get it, kids don't wait for good light. But if you do have a choice, early or late beats noon.
One opinion I'll go ahead and state plainly: light is the whole game. Ninety percent of what makes a photo look bad is bad light, not a bad camera, not the wrong phone, not you being bad at this. Fix the light first, every time, before you touch anything else.
A quick aside on chasing light
I'll admit I get a little intense about this. We were up the canyon on a family hike a while back, and I kept stopping to shoot the light coming through some scrub oak, this dappled gold stuff filtering down through the leaves. My son Easton, he was maybe fifteen at the time, finally told me I was being weird about the trees. I was. I absolutely was. But I got one shot out of that afternoon that I still like, and none of the shots I would've gotten by just walking past would've been worth keeping. Sometimes weird about the trees is exactly where a good photo comes from.
A real caution
If you're shooting near a window with direct sun coming through, don't point your camera straight at the sun for long, especially if you're using zoom. It won't hurt your eyes the way looking at the sun directly does, but it can create a weird glare or even affect the camera sensor over time if you're doing it a lot. Mild thing, not an emergency, just don't make a habit of it.
Before next time
Find one window in your house that gives good light at some point in the day, morning or evening, and take a photo of something ordinary there with the overhead off. A cup of coffee, your kid doing homework, doesn't matter. Just notice the difference.