My basic definition of natural and surreal lighting is very simple, natural is things people can and usually see with their eyes while surreal is something they see in their mind but not with their eyes.

So what is more difficult to do? To me its natural lighting, since there are limitations on what you can do, a greater understanding on how people look at images is required. There are bounderies that one must stay within that everyone that has a pair of eyes know such bounderies. A natural lighting often requires the look of a subject being lit by only one light, since we only have one sun, but not necessarily the set-up was done with just a single light. So technically speaking one must learn to integrate multiple number of lights so that only one is noticeable to the viewer.

So if natural lighting is more difficult, is surreal lighting easier? Easier, yes since in a surreal effect there is nothing that bounds a photographer but his imagination. It may be easier in my opinion but not necessarily easy; it’s quite difficult to break the boundaries of lighting if one doesn’t have a good grasp of the basics. Surreal photography often start as an imagination, skill is required to translate that imagination into a camera. Since we really can’t see a person’s imagination, we always presume that the photo being represented is indeed that person’s imagination. The photographer may have planned a natural looking photo but ended up getting a surreal photo, the beauty of this is no one knows this was purely accidental.

My examples of natural and surreal lighting:

Natural – Shot using strobes indoor, but was set to look like it was shoot under available light outdoor.

Surreal – Used a combination of strobes and continous lighting, shot to show some movements within a still photo. Lights crossing the path of the model and motion blur is not something we get to see with our naked eye.