Rob Ditessa talks to three professional photographers who primarily use simple natural lighting techniques to create their stunning images. They discuss their different approaches to photography and talk about the gear they use, how they go about metering and exposing their photos and the changes they make in post-production.
Shooting available-light photography has added a significant dimension to Ben Lee’s development as a photographer. His experience across India, Nepal, Turkey, Africa, and at a remote indigenous community in Western Australia’s Great Sandy Desert, where he shot material for the exhibition project “Desert Dwellers”, taught him how to tame harsh light. It also sharpened his skills in paying close attention to how conditions affect the qualityof light, and how quickly it can change.
“Shooting available light means being in touch with your surroundings. I love being out in nature and capturing its beauty,” Lee says. “If you can research a particular location and can spend a bit of time there, you can get a feel for the place and where to shoot from, and at what time of day. Being in a rush and shooting tests your ability to adapt to the light at the time.” Lee, a successful freelance photographer for 10 years, also teaches photography.
Katrin Koenning, named Australia’s Top Emerging Documentary Photographer in 2011, has won many awards, and works in documentary and photojournalistic styles. Her images are exhibited extensively, and have appeared in various publications including Der Spiegel, and The New York Times. Koenning finds available light photography invigorating, because she says “You’re working just with what’s there, and then owning it and using it to your advantage”.
In the often hard and unforgiving Australian light, it’s important you just accept that is how it is, rather than working against it, she says. “Available light is less intrusive, and the technique has the beautiful capacity to really embed your subject into the surroundings.”
Her initial experience with this style of shooting came in the late 1990s, when she visited a folk festival, playing around with an old film Minolta that didn’t have a built-in flash. In her development, “Available light photography has been very important in terms of how I see, understand, and use colour and light, and how my personal interpreting of it then translates into a specific mood or narrative.”
Caroline McLean-Foldes prefers the terms “ambient light” and “marginal light”. She thinks they are more evocative of the emotional and spiritual raison d’être behind her photography. She says available light photography is more liberating:
“If they look how I’d like them to, as suitable subjects, I will photograph them. If not, I must simply accept the situation rather than aspire to change it or create an artificial environment. My intention as a photographer and artist is to discover and reveal ‘what is’ rather than to create what I desire.” Since taking her first pictures, McLean-Foldes has gained a Masters in Documentary Photography and established her own photography business.
'Joy is my name', by Caroline McLean-Foldes: “I wanted the petals of the flowers to be backlit but I wanted to reveal the details in the painted pattern on the vase as well. I started with an aperture of f/5 and shutter speed of 1/60s, but the highlights were too bright to reveal the petals’ details. Because it was a sunny day, the brilliance of the sunlight could have overexposed the highlights and prevented me from balancing the shadow detail with them, so I bracketed from 1/60s to 1/250s shutter speeds and took four shots to get the right light-dark balance. The relatively fast shutter speeds for both images allowed me to handhold the camera. I only needed an ISO of 200 to capture the available light. In post-production, I just did a lens correction, checked the colour balance, and ensured the blacks were completely black. I did not do any cropping. I also did a bit of spot healing to correct familiar dust marks on my camera’s sensor. I wanted to make sure in-camera that the highlights did not blow out and overexpose the images too much.”
The "prepared mind”
Lee says it’s best to approach available light work with a state of mind focused on making the most of the conditions. Shoot as much as you can on the day, he urges, because you may not return.
McLean-Foldes finds that in going about her everyday life, something will catch her eye and she will grab her camera. Unless she responds immediately, she’ll miss the moment. One of her teachers often quoted the Louis Pasteur adage that chance favours the prepared mind. “And I have really learnt the value of this statement,” she muses.
Sometimes, though, serendipity intervenes. “I was in Zurich at a train station photographing a beautiful fine curtain waterfall in available light," she says."Suddenly a young couple appeared behind it, a boy with a Mohawk haircut and his young girlfriend. They kissed and I had the right exposure and everything else set perfectly and I was able to capture a very sweet, spontaneous, perfect moment.”
Looking at the broader perspective, Koenning cautions that – as with any picture – all the elements of composition and settings have to come together “to make an image sing”, and while you can come back to a location repeatedly, you can never come back to the exact same scene. “Moments are unique, even if they’re similar. A missed picture is a missed picture. It’s painful, of course, so I guess the only thing you can do is to let it go.”
'Heaven in a wildflower', by Caroline McLean-Foldes: Working from home allows McLean-Foldes time to track the sources of light shining through in various spaces in the house, and capture available light opportunities at a moment’s notice. “The diffused daylight illuminated and backlit the flowers in a way that gave them a crepe-like transparency. For brief, sublime moments, they glowed halo-like in the warmth of the sunshine. To create [this image] I lay on the wooden floor below the flowers, exposing for the highlights in the petals. I’m very close to the flowers so the depth-of-field is reasonably shallow with an f/5.6 setting. I focused on the orange petals. The rest of the flowers were very close to them, so they stayed reasonably focused, while the background is quite diffused and unrecognisable.”
Equipment and technique
CAROLINE MCLEAN-FOLDES
Mclean-Foldes explains, “I’ve used Canon cameras for 25 years. They’ve always been reliable and intuitive. I can use my lenses with any of them, and each one has lasted decades. I also have an antique Leica from the 1950s, but its lack of a light meter holds me back from its full and regular use. I used to use a Holga much more, but I tend to only carry one or two cameras now when I’m photographing. I prefer to be lighter and less encumbered.” Her preferred lens is a Canon 50mm f/1.4 fixed focal length. “I love
the shallow depth-of-field as it affords me the capacity to shoot in very low light, due to its large aperture capacity. I’ve been able to shoot portraits by candlelight, and other such low-lit scenarios, which I find very beautiful in the Caravaggio chiaroscuro sense.”
Her tripod is a carbon-fibre Manfrotto, though most of the time she handholds the camera, sometimes resting it on any handy prop.
Metering in contrasting light: “I meter for the light and dark, and usually make a decision based on a few test shots about how to proceed, if I have that luxury.” If, for example, she is shooting from a moving car, she makes a snap decision and accepts the results.
White Balance: Varying sources of colour, temperature and quality keep things less predictable. “I’m never sure what I’m going to achieve or learn in the process of experimentation.”
Aperture and shutter speed: “I simply have to decide what the image is fundamentally about, and work towards achieving that one thing at the possible expense of other elements.”
Pushing ISO: “In terms of how far to push the ISO to avoid grain or noise, I prefer not to go above about 400 ISO unless I really need to. Since I so often use a large aperture, it’s not usually a problem. As I’m a real perfectionist when it comes to the quality of the image and removing all traces of the artificial mechanical elements, I’m aiming to hopefully create an image that can carry the viewer elsewhere.”
Depth-of-field: Her preference is for shallow depth-of-field because it lends an evocative feeling. “Our eyes so often focus on what we’re interested in, and forget that there’s an unwanted, ugly element in the photo that we didn’t even notice when we took it. One solution is to eliminate distractions from the image, and shallow depth-of-field achieves this well.”
Focusing: “I really love the bokeh effects (artistic blur) of softer focus and shallow depth-of-field, so I tend not to be too obsessive about getting everything in my image sharp. However, sometimes I feel very distracted if there isn’t a single element in my image that’s sharp. It can make me feel I need some element to connect with visually, as a doorway into the image.”
Bracketing: “I definitely bracket. The nuances are so subtle between capturing and missing out on a beautiful, translucent, back-lit colour, a perfect highlight, or a tiny detail in a shadow area without overexposing or underexposing.”
Underexposing or overexposing: “My advice would be to practice shooting to know exactly what changes you’ll need to make if you’re in a non-reproducible situation. For instance, I know when I look at my first test shot if I need to change the shutter speed by a couple of settings.”
Mixed lighting: “This is an issue I tend to encounter most often in urban environments. I have to make a decision to juxtapose two types of light together if I wish to say something jarring, incongruous, or specific about the differences, or I must choose one or the other so the message isn’t unclear. This can be a challenge, and sometimes I simply have to accept what the scene is, and experiment and learn from it, rather than resist it, and try to change it. I’m a bit of a fatalist.”
‘Red woman clutching purse’ from Thirteen:Twenty Lacuna, 2011, by Katrin Koenning: “Vibrant colours were one of the things I watched out for when I made this body of work. I knew a bright colour would create a great contrast to the black surrounding the subjects. Seeing this woman in red was so exciting, her dress was falling beautifully as she walked. The way she held her wallet, head down, the red nails matching the dress. It was all in place. As with all images for Thirteen: Twenty Lacuna, ‘Red Woman clutching Purse’ was made in bright daylight, around lunchtime. I was in front of her in the lane way, at a very close vantage point.”
Canon EOS 5D II, 50mm, manual, f/7.1 @ 1/500s, ISO 200.
KATRIN KOENNING
Koenning’s basic available-light kit consists of a Mamiya 7II with an 80mm lens using Kodak Portra 160 film. “That’s it,” she says, “I love keeping it simple and concise, knowing what I want. The lighter your kit, the freer you can be. The freer you can be, the more involved you can get. I have gone back to working with film because it slows me right down. Film, and anything associated with it, is expensive. Therefore, you truly consider the situation before you make the picture. In fact, you visualise it, and if in your mind it’s not working, you leave it be.”
Her preference is to use fixed lenses – usually wide – because this type of lens makes you move around and get close. While Koenning does have a tripod, “a heavy and sturdy Manfrotto”, she uses it pretty much only for making pictures at night, or in otherwise extremely low-light situations.
Metering in contrasting light: In contrasting light, she meters for the light, not for the shadows. “With much of the street photography I have done, I would have been up to 1.5 stops under.”
Pushing ISO: Koenning reflects that the camera is really just a toolbox. “It’s your eye and mind that do the storytelling.” Generally, she suggests keeping film speed as slow as possible unless the nature of the work requires chaos and grit. “For one of my latest series of work I photographed a patch of starry sky above the place where a family member of mine had killed himself. Rather than using a tripod and a long exposure, I pumped up the ISO to its maximum – I was shooting on the Canon 5D Mk II – making the images look raw and messy. I did this because I wanted my audience to feel the pain of what was implied, meaning I needed the image to be a very ‘unclean’ one. Shooting a city night sky in available light on my highest ISO meant that the images turned out a deep red.”
Using film: Because using film slows the whole process of making images, Koenning suggests, she is more aware of the light. She uses Kodak Portra film, usually 160 ISO, because the colour negative has a very large and soft colour palette. “Depending on what you’re photographing, the bright and contrasty colour palette of digital can be exactly what you need, as it was for me with my project Thirteen:Twenty Lacuna, for example.”
Thirteen:Twenty Lacuna was a personal project Koenning shot between 2009 and 2011, recording people as they walked along a Melbourne laneway and were suddenly illuminated by a patch of brief and intense available natural light. The light was only ever right for about 15-20 minutes a day and only on a few months each year.
“I needed to be very fast, and the crunchy colours were exactly what I wanted in order for the colours that my subjects were wearing to be in stark contrast with the black. As soon as the light started losing intensity, I would stop and come back another day.”
Underexposing or overexposing: “Personally I try and do as much in-camera work as I possibly can. This means I will often underexpose, particularly if I’m working with a lot of deep shadow. Sometimes I will be under by up to 1.5 stops.” 
‘Untitled 1’ from the series Transit, 2006, by Katrin Koenning: “I made this picture on a train in Sydney, as we were crossing a bridge. The light was falling through the train window, strong but gently filtered through the glass. Her expression suited the light. It was pensive and dreamy, looking out but looking inward, if that makes sense. It was over the Easter holidays, and the light was less harsh. I made this image on my first digital camera, the Canon EOS 20D, on a 17-85mm lens. I have lost the data for this image, but my guess would be ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/500s.”
BEN LEE
Lee has two camera bodies, a Canon EOS 5D Mk II, and a Canon EOS 1D Mk II. He says, “Having a second body such as the Canon 1D Mk II with a conversion factor of 1.3 means I can extend telephoto length from 200mm on a full-frame body such as the 5D Mk II to 270mm. That’s handy for compressing perspective.” He has four lenses, including a wide-angle zoom 17-40mm f/4. He likes his mid zoom 24-105mm f/4 IS for its versatility, the telephoto zoom 80-200mm f/2.8 for its sharpness, and the 50mm f/1.4 prime for its speed and depth-of-field.
“The 50mm f/1.4 enables you to shoot with two and a half stops less light. So, if the light is f/4 at 1/15s, then the 50mm f/1.4 means you can shoot at 1/45s handheld,” Lee adds.
His tripod is a sturdy, but lightweight Manfrotto 441. He says he also has “a heavy Gitzo beast” for extreme stability in windy conditions and for long exposures. He uses cable release, and adds that he prefers the pan and tilt to a ball head.
As backup, he carries spare batteries, memory cards, and a black card to use as an extended lens hood or gobo. When working outdoors he includes in his kit a waterproof jacket, pants and boots as protection, and for the camera, some plastic made to fit, and some towels or microfibre to absorb moisture. “And take food and water, as you might need to wait a while,” he adds.
Handling mixed lighting: “Choose the dominant light source and set the white balance to that, or shoot RAW files.”
Underexposing or overexposing: “When we overexpose we may lose highlight detail and when we underexpose we may lose shadow detail. This is a choice we may need to make given that we can see more detail than the camera can capture. Again, choose which parts of the scene are the most important to you and get a good exposure for them.”
Tip: “Shoot RAW files if possible to give some scope for changing white balance later, choose aperture carefully and understand how movement is controlled by shutter speed. If you’re shooting JPEGs, use daylight white balance to capture the actual colours present.”
This Way, by Ben Lee: “This was a ‘stop the car now I need to shoot’ situation. Returning home across the Blue Mountains I noticed the rainbow above the ridge-top undulations. The graphic nature of the arrowed signs was important as a compositional element and the yellow and black contrast fitted the colour palette well. I then waited for the car to come in the opposite direction, being careful to get the car with its headlights not pointing directly into camera. Standing on the road and utilising its curves and lines created some flow to complement the arrows.” Shot on 35mm Fuji Sensia 100 film(positive), Nikon 24mm f/2.0 lens, 1/60s @ f/11.
POST-PRODUCTION
Koenning: “Because I shoot colour film I don’t work in the darkroom at all. I get my film processed, then I make low-res preview scans back home on my scanner. I have a large light table on which I view my negs and slides. This moment is always very exciting, as now the images – which until that point have only existed in your head – become something concrete and you can study them. I only scan the ones that I think might be good. The scanning is important because, of course, your images need to exist in the virtual world, but I also use a digital printing process, meaning my images are printed from a digital file of high-res scans. I was lucky enough to have won an Epson 4900 printer a couple of years ago, which prints up to A2 size and makes beautiful prints. “
Lee: “In terms of post-production, I use Adobe Lightroom for non-destructive adjustments of density and colour balance, and Photoshop more for re-touching and sharpening. Photos shot on film are scanned and adjusted similarly. I don’t print in a darkroom any more. Captures on digital are all RAW files.”
McLean-Foldes: “When I open an image to begin working on it in post-production, I open my image file in Camera RAW. I’ll check the white balance settings, exposure, recovery, brightness, blacks, and contrast. I move to the lens profile correction, and do any cropping I consider necessary, along with the straightening tool. Then I’ll move into spot removal or adjustment brush if necessary. I open the image in Photoshop, and by this stage most of the time I will only need to use spot healing, do a levels adjustment and save my image for printing. Most of my images are not very different from the original RAW capture.”
Horses, By Ben Lee. “A reward for getting up early on a property in the lower Hunter Valley in NSW, the backlit horses created a stunning scene. Including foreground detail framed the shot nicely and the contrast between the sun in the sky and the shadow detail draws the eye to the mid tones of the horses as the subject. I wanted one of the horses facing camera to add an element of connection, not just observation.” Shot on 35mm Fuji Realafilm (negative). Nikon 28-70mm lens, 1/60s @ f/8.