Portraits: Balancing lightTips for better portraits.

Harford Photography Club MeetupThursday, 06/21/2012 – 7:00 PM

Harford County Photography Club @ Meetup.com POC: ultraoffie@gmail.com

Techniques for Softer Fill FlashWhen shooting portraits outdoors, it is often necessary to control or modify the natural light in order to achieve the most flattering results. In a high contrast, outdoor lighting situation, many photographers resort to using fill flash to reduce contrast and bring detail into the shadow areas.

Techniques for Softer Fill Flash

The first image (left) was taken without any fill flash. The exposure was set to record full detail in the background.

The second image (middle) was taken using a shoe-mount flash mounted directly to the camera without any diffusion or modification.

The third image (right) was taken using the Flash/strobe diffuser (XS LiteDome). The flash and XS LiteDome were mounted to a flash bracket using the shoe-mount hardware included with the kit.

Shooting With Manual ControlWe chose the Manual exposure mode so that we could manually adjust your aperture and shutter speeds.

The most important thing to remember is that your aperture setting controls your depth of field. The smaller your aperture number, or "f/stop", the shorter your depth of field will be.

To display your current aperture setting, press the INFO button (located on the back, lower left). The second group of numbers along the top of the LCD screen displays your current aperture setting

Shooting With Manual Control

Back ground properly metered. The main subject was to dark. A brighter exposure would have blow out her hair. Blown details will become a distracting element.

Built-in flash activated

This series was shot at a slightly higher exposure level and with the built-in flash activated. This is a method many novice photographers will use for outdoor portraits, as it helps to reduce the contrast

Beware of Blown HighlightsIn the result, you can see that the contrast ratio is somewhat better than in the previous shot, but at the expense of a somewhat unnatural quality of light, which is most evident in the eyes.

See the tiny reflections centered in the middle of the pupils? These reflections would not appear like this in person unless you happened to be holding a tiny flashlight directly into her eyes while you looked at her..

Setup for Backlit by sun reflector fill and hair light

Putting it all together

The reflector Panel and Small fill flash worked perfectly to accentuate the warm light of the sun, the telephoto lens helped to keep the optical distortion low and throw the background out of focus, and our model did a great job of looking relaxed and natural.

Putting it all together

Enhancing Dusk Light In Outdoor PortraitureThe Concept and SetupThe basic idea for this lesson was to demonstrate how straightforward it can be to light and photograph an action portrait at dusk for spectacular results.

Enhancing Dusk Light In Outdoor Portraiture

Enhancing Dusk Light In Outdoor Portraiture

Soft Light in the Middle of the Day

Notice the specular highlights, dark shadows and awkward tonal shapes that appear on Mattie's face as it's illuminated by the harsh light of the sun. Even after activating the camera's built-in fill flash, the results were still poor.

Soft Light in the Middle of the Day. Diffusers.

Soft Light in the Middle of the Day. Diffusers.

links

Photoflex Lighting school

http://www.photoflexlightingschool.com/Equipment_Lessons/StarFire_trade_/Shooting_Beach_Portraits_at_Dawn/index.html

Olympus Digital School

http://www.olympusdigitalschool.com/Photo_Lessons/EVOLT_E-5

00___Simple_Vacation_Portrait_Tricks_-_Part_One/index.html