North light

North light

Just occasionally, you read about north light, or even a north light studio.

That’s not where the once-ubiquitous BBC Northern Dance Orchestra recorded for the Light Programme, but it’s all about making good portraits.

It started back in the Victorian era, when photography was a new and exciting technology. Unfortunately, it was also quite difficult, and not just in the way that some camera menus are. Making a portrait involved physical effort from the sitter, to keep still enough for the very long exposures needed.

As the science of emulsions developed (sorry…) exposures got shorter, but studio catalogues tended to include neck braces and other devices to aid stability. And if you’ve ever wondered about those rather stiff, unnatural poses – well, it’s because poses were chosen to make keeping still easier.

Just like today, portrait studios were set up so that it was easy just to load the camera and take the picture: time is money. And in the absence of useable bright artificial light, this meant that the ideal was a studio with plenty of daylight, and – crucially – good consistency of light.

That meant a studio with big windows facing north: imagine a large conservatory, but built onto the dark side of the house. My wife would recoil at the idea, but I rather like it!

Consistent light means that there’s no problem with having to kill shadows, or wildly differing tonal ranges (which would have needed different development times).

And that may have started the big differences between amateur and professional photographers, who can still make use of the same conditions. Amateurs, over a hundred years ago were given the instruction ‘Take pictures with your back to the sun’ – which has led to many images of people with their eyes screwed up, but fully lit.

I notice the absolute absence of north light in my front room when I shoot with muslin in the bay window, which faces south-east. On a cloudy day, it’s not bright enough, really: on a sunny day with clouds passing, the light level varies.

In the back room, with a French window leading onto the garden, light levels are always low, but the quality of light is very consistent. I quite like the cooler colour rendition it gives (as in the shot of Rachelle Summers above), compared with the warmer look of sunshine through the net curtains (Alicia, below) - but that's easy to adjust anyway!