Think about it, every light shaping tool there is, has been conceived to mimic some phenomenon of natural light.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m hooked on my Pro Photo AcuteB600R portable pack.  But the fact is, for me nothing beats the seductive quality of soft window light. 

Call me old fashioned but I do use a light meter.  Dome in.  Point the light meter directly back toward where the camera lens will be where you’re making your images from.   In this case I set my, Sekonic, Flash Master L-358 light meter to 1250 ISO, clicked the trigger to read the light and it gave me a light reading of 250th/sec at an aperture of 4.0.  I know that with my Canon Mark III or 5D 1250 ISO is virtually noiseless and ended up shooting with the Mark III just for speed’s sake.  I have several 20” framed prints, from our Epson 9800, on Crane Museo rag paper, of Savanah, showing just how soft her skin is, proving that digital noise at 1250 is a moot point. Still I could have easily gone to 30” prints without any worry about noise.

Each and every one of the portraits in this post was taken on the kitchen table directly opposite the window.  As it happened I was lucky, there was gorgeous soft light from the window. I made sure that Tim and Kristin (Savanah’s parents) were present the entire time, acting as spotters to make sure that Savanah remained on the table.  If the quality of light had been harsh, I would have covered the window with a scrim, essentially turning it into a soft box.

When photographing babies and children, I look for contrast of textures.  Savanah’s mom wasn’t crazy about a pink blankie that I wanted to use, so I asked her if she had another colored blankie, something with texture and she pulled out the blue one pictured here.  When photographing babies, especially newborns, you have to have allot of patience.  Savanah was only 2 weeks old when I photographed her.  We had to wait for here to breast feed, poop and spit up.  After a while she gave in to the sleep fairy and fell quietly asleep.  I asked Kristin to turn her onto her belly, and snuggle here legs underneath her.  Then I asked Tim and Kristin to hold up the back of the blue blanket making it the prefect backdrop.  At this point the light changed a little bit so I re-metered and shot away. 

Oh yeah…in situations like this I always shoot in manual mode.  Why?  I have a constant light source, with minor intensity changes, and it makes post a snap.  Before you go out and just start using your light meter, make sure that it is correctly calibrated.  I know from experience that my light meter is spot on and that the info it spits out, when input to my camera will make a perfect exposure.  Occasionally I need to tweak my camera by a half to three quarters of a stop in certain tricky lighting situations but the majority of the time, my light meter is dead on. 

Savanah came into this world just a few weeks ago, with nothing more than the love of her parents. Her portraits were made very much the same way:  nothing more than a little window light, a blue blanket, a kitchen table and allot of love from her photographer.

© Marc Weisberg