Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“I don’t mind being burdened with being glamorous and sexual. Beauty and femininity are ageless and can’t be contrived…”—
Boudoir photography, or Intimate Portraiture as I prefer to call the genre, is typically shot using a moody interior or studio setting but there’s no reason you can’t shoot this kind of portrait outdoors.
One of my favorite outdoor lighting techniques is backlighting, which can produce highlights on the subject’s hair and blow out the background to create a pseudo high-key effect and perhaps minimize the effect of a less than exciting background. Want to try it? Here’s all you have to do:
The next time you plan to photograph a model outdoors, place her in a pose that you might normally use but with the sun on her face and then—turn her around in the opposite direction! Right away the subject is more relaxed because the sun is behind her and she won’t be squinting.
Next turn on your speedlight. Be sure to use flash, otherwise she‘ll be a silhouette. In order to get a final image you can live with, you may also have to open the lens a stop or two over the metered exposure just as you might with any backlit subject but this method should produce an attractive glow around all or part of your model.
If you plan to shoot full length portraits instead of close-ups, a more powerful speedlight, like the Canon 550EX that I used for the featured portrait at right, will be more effective than the weaker pop-up flashes found on most entry-level digital SLRs or mirrorless cameras.
How I Made this Portrait: Over the years I have been blessed to photograph some amazingly wonderful and beautiful models, such as Tomiko who I photographed in Phoenix, Arizona. For this image, I’m using my basic flash technique for backlighting, although the effect here is more subtle. Exposure with a Canon EOS 60D and EF 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 lens (at 55mm) with 550EX speedlight used for fill was 1/125 sec at f/5.6 and ISO 200.
If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to buy Joe a cup of Earl Grey tea ($2.50), click here. And if you do, thank so very much.
Several photographs of Tomiko appear in my book Available Light Glamour Photography that’s available from Amazon with new copies of the book for just $29.95 with used copies starting at the bargain price of $19.61, as I write this. The Kindle version is $22.49 for those preferring a digital format.