The gallery “Lisa in a blue dress” marks the return of the indoor natural light gallery to Torrid Art. Many of you know that I love shooting erotic images using natural light. In fact, the indoor, 100% natural light gallery is one of the hallmarks of Torrid Art. However, it’s been 8 months since I last added an indoor natural light gallery (Marlie on the dresser). I wont go into the reason for the hiatus, I will just say that I am shooting it once again, and it’s time for a blog on natural light!

First, what the heck is “natural light?” Natural light is sunlight in any form. It can come through a window, door, or skylight. As long as it originates from the sun, it’s natural light. The other form of lighting I use is studio strobes, or flashes.

To me, natural light just looks more erotic and more emotional than light from studio strobes. However, both types of lighting have their strengths and weaknesses, and that’s why I like to shoot both.

Often, my galleries with strobes look remarkably like natural light. Go figure! For example, this photo of Charlotte, from her “black dress” gallery, was lit with strobes. I wanted to simulate natural light from a window. I light some galleries with a combination of natural and strobe light. But when I describe a gallery as lit with natural light, I mean 100% natural light.

There is a basic problem with using natural light: Getting enough of it. For Torrid Art, the locations I shoot in are houses, and many are just too dark inside for shooting without flash. Though I re-use some locations, for the most part each model is shot in a different location. And I never really know ahead of time if the location will have enough light for a natural light gallery. Usually they don’t.

For the gallery of Lisa, the window light on the bed was considerably below what I would be comfortable with as a minimum light level, but I was determined to shoot with natural light! Because of the low light, the photos look “grainy” and, sometimes,  a  tiny bit blurry.

Ok, I know what the photographers are thinking: use a tripod! Unfortunately, tripods don’t solve all the problems. And besides, I didn’t have my tripod with me for this session. :-[

These galleries, with their soft, natural light and unusual camera settings, have their own erotic quality and personality. They are an important part of Torrid Art.

I hope you like them.

RAP

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 at 3:07 pm and is filed under lighting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.