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Photo Tips & Techniques

Photographing People Outdoors by Russ Burden while classic portraiture utilizes the ability of the studio to control elements like lighting, outdoor portraiture can be a little more tricky Article rating: 7.72

Traditionally, classic portraiture is reserved for the studio for many reasons. Controlled lighting produces consistent results. Backgrounds can be changed to meet given requirements. Specific props can be added for greater impact. Window light can be used as the main source of illumination or the photographer can chose to use soft boxes, floods, or direct flash with each having their pluses and minuses. While I respect, admire, and appreciate all the nuances of what the accomplished studio photographer can produce, for me, it’s all about the great outdoors. The smell of the fresh air, extracting beauty from an urban or natural setting, and overcoming the challenge of natural light makes me prefer photographing people outdoors. Found below are three tips I incorporate into my outdoor people shoots.

Warm Light: Shoot when the sun is low on the horizon. This means getting your subject out of bed early to be on location at sunrise or being outdoors at the time of sunset. When the sun is low on the horizon, the light is much softer and very warm in tone. These two qualities produce images with incredible light. The duration doesn’t last long so you need to be on your game. Know what you want to produce ahead of time and position your subjects accordingly. This means scouting the area in which you’ll photograph beforehand so you can work more efficiently when it’s time to create the portrait. The closer the sun is to the horizon, the warmer it becomes. Use this warm light to emphasize a mood. It’s  one time when front lighting a subject works great. Just be careful your shadow doesn’t enter into the composition.

Match Clothing To Environment:  An urban setting can be dramatic especially if the subject has the look, feel and clothing that reflects the location. In the accompanying image, I was working with a model in Central Park. While walking from one shooting area to the next, we passed by the orange and black wall seen in the accompanying image. Based on what the model was wearing, I decided to take advantage of the location and make some head shots seeing how the black hat and dress matched the darks on the wall and the warm skin and lip tone had color harmony with the orange. I  positioned her in the same shade that fell on the wall but had her move a bit to her left to pick up the sun’s highlight on her hat, hair and shoulder. This would be a tough shot to create in a studio.

Augment The Light: On bright sunny days, even when working in the morning or later in the afternoon, the light can be contrasty. With this in mind, I seek out shade so the light on my subject is soft. This being said, while the light on the person I’m photographing looks great, the background can wreak havoc being far too bright creating highlights that distract the viewer from looking at the subject. To overcome this, I use reflectors or fill flash to add more light allowing me to use a higher aperture or faster shutter speed to control the ambient light falling on the background. For instance, if I take a meter reading of my subject and get f4 at 1/125th second and don’t use flash, the highlights in the background, contrasted with the shaded subject, will be very bright. But if I use my flash and set my aperture to f5.6 and change my shutter speed to 1/250, the subject will be properly illuminated by the flash and  the background will be two stops darker. I try to avoid settings that differentiate more than two stops from the ambient light on the subject as the pictures tend to look too flashed.

To learn more about this topic, join me on one of my Photographic Nature Tours. Visit www.russburdenphotography.com and click on the NATURE TOURS button for more information. Also, pick up a copy of my book, Amphoto’s Complete Book of Photography. You can purchase a signed copy directly from me or visit your local book store or Amazon. Contact me at rburden@ecentral.com to order your signed copy.

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