Once again over here at Aperture Academy we have or super fun Natural Light Portraits class. As I arrive to Aperture Academy new beautiful location I begin to see the light that is falling all around our shooting locations that surround the building. Today is going to be a great day for natural light portraits. A few minutes later, some students start to show up.

As the new students show up, Elle and I begin to introduce them and show off the new location to those who have not yet seen the new building. Soon as the last of the students arrive we jump into our always fun, and interesting power point. Elle starts off by introducing her method for understanding exposer, and then hands it over to me to introduce things like lens choices and why we should be shooting in Camera Raw for todays Natural Light Portrait class. And that takes us to the end of our power point presentation, just as our portrait subjects for today arrive.

Our models for the day are one amazing little lady who was only nine and loves the camera, and another older model who knows her way around Aperture Academy and has been our model several times before. We introduce everyone, and head outside to our first location. The groups splits up into two groups of five, and begin to get our cameras set up for shooting portraits in natural light.

I began talking to the group about the quality of light, and about how I see light in everywhere. I have the class help me figure out where we want to have the model for our first location. As we move the model from place to place, and the class get more comfortable, we move to various lighting conditions, open shade, spotted light, back lighting, and we go over what to do in these situations, and the students continue to get fun and amazing photos.

Towards the end of the day Elle and I swapped models and we talked about how lighting affects the mood, and the clothing, and posing, and all that goes into a portrait. That led us into my favorite photo of the day, the wacky group portrait!

Everyone over here at Aperture Academy thanks you for being awesome and joining us for your photographic journey!

If you'd like to join us at one of our workshops, you can find the schedule/sign up here.

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