Creating the Look of Sunlight in the Studio with Only 1 Light

Creating the look of sunlight in a studio can be tricky, but with the right technique, you can achieve stunning results. In a recent photo deconstruction, Lindsay Adler shows us how to do just that with only one light. Here’s a breakdown of her process.

Lindsay loves shooting in the studio. However, she sometimes wants to mimic the natural light effects you get from shooting outdoors. Whether it’s the soft light of an overcast day or the sharp, crisp light of a sunny one, she demonstrates how to create these effects indoors. This particular deconstruction focuses on replicating the bright, hard sunlight using just a single strobe.

Building the Set

The inspiration for this shoot came from a previous location shoot Lindsay had done, which featured white walls and lots of hard sunlight. But on the day of the studio shoot, it was cloudy, so she had to recreate that look indoors.

She started by setting up a V-Flat behind her subject. Instead of positioning her model in front of a flat white background, she had her pose inside the V-Flat, which created a corner and gave a more three-dimensional feel. The V-Flat was a bit shorter than usual, so she adjusted the poses to keep everything within the frame.

Creating the Sunlight Effect

To mimic the hard light of the sun, Lindsay explains that sunlight is an extremely hard light source with very defined shadow edges. To recreate this, she used a Profoto D2 strobe with no modifier, creating a bare bulb effect. She notes that the smaller the light source in relation to the subject, the harder the light will be.

For an even harder light effect, like that from a speedlight, you can back the light source away from the subject. This increases the intensity and hardness of the light. Lindsay also positioned the light high and at an angle to emulate the sun’s position.