My Sunday series about making portraits outdoor continues today with a portrait of Jamie Lynn, who I once photographed at a group model shoot that was held in Northern Colorado. I later photographed her for some lens reviews that appeared in the former print edition of Shutterbug magazine, where you might have seen her.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Lighting is everything. It creates mood and has an emotional effect on you.— Zak Bagans
As I’ve mentioned before, one of my favorite techniques for outdoor portraiture is using backlighting to produce highlights on the subject’s hair and, depending on the available light in scene, maybe blow out the background to create a pseudo high-key effect.
Want to give it a try?
The next time you wan to photograph somebody outdoors, place them in the kind of position that you might normally use with the sun shining onto their face but instead of making a photograph at that point, turn the subject around with the sun at their back. Right away the subject will be more relaxed because they won’t have to squint!
Next turn on your flash and it doesn’t matter whether it’s built-in or a shoe mount speedlight. But be sure to use flash, otherwise the subject will appear as a silhouette in the portrait. In order to get a final image you can live with, you may have to open the aperture a stop or two over the metered exposure (or just use exposure compensation.) Tip: If you plan to shoot full-length portraits instead of a more close-up image like this one of Jamie-Lynn, a more powerful speedlight will be more effective than the smaller pop-up flashes that are found on entry-level digital SLRs.
How I made this portrait: I photographed Jamie Lynn at a group photo shot in Northern Colorado. As I was making this and similar shots of her, I overheard several photographers talking about what I was doing and saying things like, “look at that dummy Joe, he’s got her back turned to the sun and is using flash—outdoors.” Yes, I was doing that very thing for all of the reasons I just articulated a few paragraphs above.
For this portrait, the camera used was a Canon EOS 1D Mark II N (that I sold but kind of miss) and the no longer available but still useful EF135mm f/2.8 SF (Soft Focus) lens set at zero for no soft focus. Yes, this is the replacement for the infamous Stupid Photographer’s Trick lens. Fill light was provided by a 550 EX speedlite I still own and use. Exposure was 1/200 sec at f/5.6 and ISO 200. The RAW file was retouched with Imagenomics Portraiture then tweaked in Color Efex with a little corner burning fadded rom PhotoKit.
For more tips, tricks and techniques for creating studio lighting effects without spending the big bucks on gear, please pick up a copy of my book Studio Lighting Anywhere, which features a cover photograph by Mary Farace. It’s available new from Amazon for $34.95 with used copies starting at the bargain price of $12.28, as I write this. The Kindle version is only $19.99 for those preferring a digital format.