Window lighting

[missjones94]

hey! new here! (a lot of explanation before the question sorry) still an amateur photographer at the moment learning everything i can practicing on family and stuff.

I'm moving into a new flat soon so means a whole new lighting situation which i'm excited about because I will be having a huge bay window so tons of natural light!

I having been exploring boudoir photography with a few mates asking for photos to give as gifts to their partner.
my question is how do i protect their privacy with this window while still being able to use the nice natural light? my bay window will be looking out onto a very busy street, and the local bus station (i know that you will be able to see into my flat from the bus station).

thanks! hope it makes sense

 

[Fuji Dave]

@Garry Edwards is the man to help you.

 

[Garry Edwards]

I'm not sure that I am, but I'll try.
Firstly, I think that "Boudoir Photography" is someone's registered trademark, so shouldn't be used by others, you may want to check that out.

Secondly, this type of photography generally involves creating lots of shadows in the right places, windows aren't necessarily right for it unless the subject has the window as the background and then reflectors are used to kick back light as necessary.

The shadows are always a vital part, but this type of photography nearly always involves (and here I stick my head over the parapet and make typical male inappropriate comments) photos of women who've thought about having nude / semi nude photos for a very long time and should really have done it ten years ago, so deep shadows assume great importance. Getting the right shadows in the right places often involves multiple light sources, and pretty small ones at that. One big bay window would need a lot of selective masking to get anywhere near.

I've found an old photo that's a semi-silhouette, with the window as the background - sort of. It's NSFW so I've cropped it to make it OK for this forum

Actually that wasn't a real window, it was a studio window, made from 8' x'8' timber with a couple of flash heads mounted permanently inside, and a lace curtain outside. This takes care of the privacy issue. If you want to use a real window for this then it may work just to have a large sheet of heavily diffused plastic in front of the window for privacy reasons, and the glazing bars can just be bits of sticky tape, as in the photo above.

But the real problem with window light is that it depends too much on the time of day, the weather conditions and the fact that you can't move the window to create the lighting effects that you actually want. It does have its limitations and isn't actually better than artificial light. It became popular with portrait photographers in the dim and distant past simply because it was the only type of light that was available at the time.