We work on a small budget at school doing pictures for the yearbook. One of the things that hasn’t made it into the budget – since we don’t do a whole lot of formal portraits – is a background stand with some backgrounds.
Instead, we make do with what we can. A plain white wall or a projection screen can make a nice clean background, but the white / off-white is a bland color. So what can we do with the lighting equipment we already have…?
Keep reading…
A friend of a friend is a fashion designer. I met her at a fashion show at a local university when I took some pictures (from the audience for my friend, not in any official capacity). The other day, I was browsing through my Facebook news feed and I saw a batch of pictures crop up with her work…
This was probably the best picture out of the whole shoot. Most of them were very poorly lit, and the focus was soft (off?). I asked her how she ended up with the photographer, and her model had booked him. Oh well… her loss.
So what’s going on in this picture? And what’s wrong with it?
Keep reading…
Why use shutter priority mode when your outside with your speedlight…? Cause otherwise you’ll end up with a picture like this. Oops.
I had two new students taking pictures at graduation. That tends to happen every year, because my photography crew is all seniors… so they can’t really take pictures when they’re in the graduation. I’m also participating in the graduation, so I can give the new girls some hints here and there but I can’t follow them around and make sure everything goes smoothly.
In this case, I instructed them to try and shoot from the left side of the field, where the sun would come down and light everyone nicely (see post 1 of this series). Then I made the mistake of telling them that if they really needed to take a picture from the right side of the field, they could try putting the speedlight on top and seeing if that helped.
When we started this series on shooting in sunlight, I said that the most important thing to remember was to keep the sun behind you. Good advice, but sometimes you just can’t do it… and sometimes you’ll want to do the opposite for artistic effect.
This picture was taken on the way to a prom. The girls saw an arbor/archway under which they wanted to take pictures (you can’t see the arch in the picture, it was cropped out of this one). Naturally, that placed the sun right behind them and in view of the camera.
The trick to getting a well exposed image here is to use a flash to fill and light the subjects, while allowing the sun to light the background and glance off their heads creating a rim light. You’ll also have to battle with the possibility of lens flare, which in this image is manageable and artistic but in some of the other images was kind of overpowering.
In the first part of this series on shooting in sunlight, we looked at how to position yourself properly and utilize the sun as a light. In this second part, let’s think about what is the best camera setting or mode to use when working outside in bright sunlight? Keep reading…
When it’s sunny out and there’s no shade, the sun acts like a giant light. If you’re doing a staged portrait, you might be able to set up some kind of overhang or canopy to create shade… but in an event situation you don’t have that luxury.
Bright, harsh sunlight can make for horrible pictures, or it can make for great ones. In this first part of our four part series on shooting in sunlight, we’ll focus on how the sun can work for you. The most important thing to remember is that the sun is just a really big light, and if you position it right… it’ll help you out. Keep reading…
So it seems that whatever caused my site to get blacklisted by Google is now gone. Search engine traffic is magically back to what it used to be. /shrug
I suppose that means it’s time to get posting again. Recently, I’ve been stuck doing a lot of work out in bright, harsh sunlight. It’s a fairly annoying task for several reasons, but I found it to be an even bigger problem when I had to train two brand new recruits for my photo crew in a bright, sunny day. Eugh.
It got me thinking, though, that it’s a good topic for a series of posts. So, starting Saturday, I’ll be posting various related tips about shooting in the sun. Stay tuned to this post for links to each article, or subscribe to the RSS feed.
Yesterday, I used a few example images from football to look at how the sun works as a lght source. I’ve got a couple more examples today to, hopefully, hammer home the point.
Here we are, at the county championships. Time for a quick team photo. The sun is dropping, and there’s some cloud cover, and it looks like there’s a nice big shadowy area right over here!
As soon as the girls got lined up, though, the clouds magically disappeared and the sun appeared, shining brightly, right behind the group. Eugh! Keep reading…
Saturday was a bright, sunny day. Mid-60′s. Not a cloud in the sky, and almost no wind. Perfect weather…
Unless you’re trying to take pictures. This kind of harsh sunlight, especially late in the fall when the sun gets low in the sky, highlights an important part of outdoor photography: understanding the sun’s roll as a light source.
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ake a look at the picture to the left. Notice the shadows, coming toward us and to the right? Also notice the extreme highlight on the quarterback’s (#7) back? These are clear indicators that the sun is on the other side of the field and to the left. Keep reading…
One of the key elements of lighting is how hard or soft your light is. Hard light is pointed, directional, and creates harsh shadows – like a spotlight. Soft light seems to come from no where and creates gradual (or no) shadows – like sunlight on a cloudy day.
Often times, portrait and fashion photographers will rave about soft light. It looks so natural and pleasing, and often-times it is. It’s also easy to create a go-to lighting situation that utilizes soft light to quickly make a lovely portrait. But, sometimes you want to be a little adventuresome… Keep reading…
We work on a small budget at school doing pictures for the yearbook. One of the things that hasn’t made it into the budget – since we don’t do a whole lot of formal portraits – is a background stand with some backgrounds.
