In a lot of my portraits I use artifical lighting (e.g. studio flashes) to light the people I shoot. The reason is that I can have complete control over the strength, the direction and the quality of the light.

Natural light (the sun, window light) often changes, so can be trickier to work with. But natural light can also be beautiful.

As photographers, we often try to make artificial light look like natural light. To create nice soft lighting across a person’s face, without hard shadows.

Here are two portraits that show what I mean - one using window light, one using flash. Both are with soft lighting and both could have been shot with either natural or studio flash.

The key is understanding light and how to use it.