Direction of natural light that changes due to Earth’s movement around the sun has a major impact on something as large as a portion of a landscape. However, the direction of natural light can have an even more drastic affect on how smaller subjects (people, animals, objects) appear and we don’t even have to wait for the earth to make its move.

Indoors, during the day, the immediate light source is generally a window or an opening. We can easily change the direction of natural light when this is the case and the subject is a person or an object that we can move.

We don’t literally direct the light. We place ourselves and the subject in various ways in relation to the light sources and this changes the direction of light in relation to what we frame with the camera.

Some examples of effects we can easily achieve when directing natural light indoors.

For a gradual fade from bright to dark (left, middle), position a person with the light source at 45º in relation to the face.

For a harsher fade from bright to dark (right), position a person parallel to the opening.

For a rim-light effect around the outline of a subject (not shown), position a person with the light source at 45 degrees in relation to the person’s back.

Exercise:

The little shoot that I did with Jane in the video can be done as a sort of exercise. You should again grab a person and go next to a window where light isn’t entering directly (no bright sun rays shining through the window). Start doing what I did. Photograph from one angle, then turn yourself and your subject. Get the subject to step closer to the window, then away from it. This is all about experimenting and just having fun, so just try as many nuances as possible.

To know what image is from which angle when you’re looking at them later, ask your subject to hold a paper and write something like parallel to the window or three steps away, two steps away. It’s important to learn exactly what you’re doing, so making these kinds of notes is very useful.