Out Door Portraits Page 2

Lighting
The importance of lighting can’t be underestimated, as this is what brings your portraits to life. You can’t always choose what type of lighting you’ll get, but you can prepare for a few eventualities and make the most of opportunities that present themselves to you.
One of the most important aspects of light is its ‘quality’ – whether it’s a strong, midday light or a soft, early evening glow. This will have a vital effect on your image, making it equally important to select the right white balance to replicate the light and its effects as accurately as possible. The direction from which the light is coming and whether your subject is against a dark or light background is also important. As a general rule, if the subject is well lit and bright, it works well to contrast this with a dark background. Alternatively, if the subject is in shadow, a lighter background will place more emphasis on them.

In any case, a soft, or even a non-directional light, will be more flattering to a subject than a harsh direct light. Shooting with the sun behind you, where it strikes your subject face on, will cause a lot of squinting – not to mention unhappy models. When the sun is behind your subject, lens flare is a risk as well as there being a harsh contrast between the bright sky and your shadowed subject. If you are working in these conditions, try to keep the sun at approximately a 45° angle to the face of the subject. This avoids the subject having to look directly into the light and squinting. Equally, when the subject is at a 90° angle to the sun, shadows will stretch right across their face. If you can’t avoid brightly lit shots, try using the sunlight as a backlight with fill-in flash from the front. You’ll soon find ways to soften the light using the area you’re in. Try looking for overhanging branches or a roof that breaks up the light. Alternatively if there are clouds in the sky wait until one moves over the sun, diffusing the light briefly.

Fill-in flash
Although flash is commonly seen as a tool for low-light situations, it can also be effectively used to fill in the shadows cast by strong directional light. It’s very easy to use – simply take your exposure reading from the background (using the evaluative mode on your camera) and your automated flash will do the rest. There are times where you may have to use the flash compensation to control the light but some camera systems compensate automatically. You can judge the strength of the flash on your subject with a quick glance on your LCD screen to see if highlights have been blown out, either by using the histogram to check an even exposure across the image, or by the blinking white areas, signalling where the image has received too much exposure. Don’t get too hung-up over whether the histogram shows a perfect graduation as sometimes blown-out highlights can eradicate what’s unnecessary to an image, placing more focus on the subject. The main thing is to make sure that your subject is correctly exposed.

Backlighting
This can be an interesting way to light your subject. The key to good backlight is going to be your exposure. The camera’s exposure meter is going to be easily fooled into reading the light behind the subject. When exposed, this will leave your subject in shadow. You will need to expose for the light falling on your subject’s face to get a good exposure, using either the appropriate metering setting on your camera or a handheld light meter. A good way to give your images a 3D quality is to add fill-in flash to backlit shots, as the two light sources will combine to model the subject well and balance out the lighting problems.

TIP: You may have to adjust your white balance settings as the day progresses, especially if there is a substantial shift in cloud and sun levels or if you are shooting between varied conditions, such as sun and then shade.

Reflectors
Reflectors bounce light back onto your subject, brightening up areas of shadow. They come in a range of sizes and tints (for ‘warming’ and ‘cooling’ the subject) and the great thing is that you can see what the result will be before taking the shot. Simply hold your reflector and angle it until you have the result you want. You’ll probably need someone to hold it during shooting (maybe the model themself?) or you may be able to rest it against a wall, or on the ground. Alternatively you can attach them to a lighting stand. Another device in a similar vain are diffusers. These allow sunlight to pass through but soften it and reduce its intensity.

Points of Focus
Focusing is the essential ingredient to all photography. When it comes to portraiture however, you really need to know where to focus on, especially when you are taking close-up portraits with a small depth of field.
Select your focus mode – autofocus may be helpful but for close-up work it sometimes may be better to switch to manual focus. Remember how close your lens can focus so you’re not shooting outside of this limit.

Choose your focus area – for accuracy, switch the area of autofocus to a single point. The point does not have to sit over the area you wish to focus on as you can always focus and then recompose, but make sure that the distance between camera and subject has not changed.

Check your settings – make sure your autofocus is in one-shot mode and the camera’s drive is set to single shot.

Choose where to focus – for the majority of shots, you want the eyes to be nice and sharp as they are the feature that the viewer will look at first. Don’t be afraid to highlight different features by focusing elsewhere though.