I promised a processing tutorial the other day and it got SUPER busy with Christmas day preparations yesterday! I still have to cook so I have to keep this short but I hope you all enjoy! VERY Merry Christmas to you all!!
Have a great day!!!! I hope this is helpful!!
Hugs!
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As a natural light photographer there will be SO many times when your lighting conditions aren’t up to par. You can’t control the weather unfortunately, especially in New England where I am from. We can go from Hurricane winds and rain to Full blaring hot crazy sun lol! And its happened to me on more then one occasion!
A quick tip is when you are uncertain about how the light is hitting your subject it helps to walk a full circle around the person you are photographing. Watch how the light hits and falls on the face. You want to watch for harsh shadows and hallowed eye sockets. Those are big no nos. One tell tale sign for myself is my subject is squinting. As you circle your subject you will really see the light change for the better or worse. If you do encounter full sun and can not find open shade or an optimum lighting situation you can turn your subject so the sun is behind them (also known as backlighting) I shoot in raw and it allows me quite a bit of wiggle room and I can do whatever small touch ups in ACR before I go on to process my photo in photoshop. I do tend to expose for the skin and especially the face without blowing any main details in the photo such as clothing and skin. I don’t mind a blown sky on backlit images.A good way to keep an eye on over exposure is watching your histogram. If you are creeping up the sides of the histogram either to the left or right you are losing detail in the black and white areas of your photo. Not good!
Here is an example of a handsome little man I photographed on a recent session that I just turned facing the sun and then facing away from the sun. These photos were taken minutes apart. You notice that he is squinting with the sun hitting him full on in the face and the lighting is a bit harsh on his skin in the full sun photo example. I know sometimes you really want a certain detail in the photo (i.e. the pond versus the road behind him) so if you find that flipping them around wields to a funky background don’t be afraid to move them entirely. This happened to really work for me because of the gorgeous fall foliage in the photo behind him in the backlit image.
The backlit photo is a tad underexposed but that is a super easy fix in photoshop. Tomorrow I will post a recipe with my photoshop actions to give you an idea of how i would edit the backlit image. 🙂 I decided to post the straight out of the camera shots so you can get a super accurate idea of what my photos would look like before I even touched them since this tutorial is more about the in camera then anything to do in photo editing.
Now you could even use a reflector. I don’t personally use them (though I own one in case) because I am normally chasing small kids around and its not really convenient for me. That is why raw is such a huge component of my style. It gives me some control back. There are ways to get around full sun though and this is def a quick effective way thats helped me a ton!
Tune in for the second part (processing of the backlit image) tomorrow!! Hope you guys have a wonderful night!!
Thanks!
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