2018 was a pretty big year. Yodeling made a comeback, a star was (re)born, and so was another royal baby. Oh, and a ton of cool stuff happened in the world of photography, too. We thought we’d use the most wonderful time of the year to showcase some of our favorite, high-impact visual trends.

Over the years, photographers have perfected the art studio lighting. They work in traditional, light-controlled studios with various combinations of continuous and strobe lighting, bouncing in backfill to create the perfect highlights, shadows, softness and drama. It's a process of adding light in a controlled way to achieve a natural look.

Increasingly though, creative directors and photographers have started to ask why we go to the effort to recreate natural light instead of simply using natural light?