Great lighting is by far the most important thing to photography. You can have the most expensive camera equipment, the most beautiful subject, and the perfect background, but if the lighting is off the entire photo is bad. Lighting is everything. Today I took Noah outside to get some examples of where the best lighting is outside in the middle of the day.
One night I was in the grocery store and a client came behind me in line. He told me his son had graduated from college that day. After the congratulations were given he then told me he was disappointed because the photos they took afterwards looked really bad and he didn’t know why. The first thing I asked was if they were standing out in the sun. His answer confirmed that they were directly under the sun on a bright day.
Please please please try to avoid taking pictures on a bright day right underneath the sun. This is what happens when you do.
Why yes, he’s very cute (I’m biased), but it’s not a good photo because of the dark shadows all over his face. I can’t even see his beautiful blue eyes.
The first rule of thumb is do not take photos out in full sun during the middle of the day if you can avoid it. With that being said universities don’t schedule graduations for optimal lighting for photos. Sometimes it cannot be avoided. In those situations you have a few of options to still get good photos. First, look for some shade. Not the deep dark shade way underneath a porch or big heavy tree. I’m talking about what’s called open shade. That is the shade of a building, tree, fence, anything. Stand your subject at the very edge of the shade right before the sun hits the ground. Now look at your subject. If there are bright patches of sunlight on their face, or dark shadows under their eyes move them back a little.
The second thing you can do is look for the sweet spot where the sun is lighting the back of your subject, and leaving their face evenly lit. I usually look around at the people around me to find out where the sun is hitting them.
You can see in the above photo the sun is to Noah’s back. His back is brightly lit, but the front of him is shaded. This is a great position to take his photo.
There are his eyes, and no shadows! The other advantage of your subject not looking straight into the sun is they aren’t squinting their eyes in discomfort.
You do have to be very careful not to get one side of the face totally blown out, or too bright. I could have avoided this by moving his face a little more to his left.
Some of you might go to try this and come back with pictures of your subject completely black, and the background nicely lit. That is because your camera tries to measure the light of the entire scene and then even it out to get the exposure that would work for most of the picture. You can avoid this by switching your camera to manual mode (if possible). Check in your camera instruction manual for directions on how to do that. I know it’s incredibly boring to read, but I promise it’s worth it.
I use what’s called spot metering in my camera. All I do is fill the frame, or what I can see through the lens, with what I want exposed properly. In the above case it would be Noah’s face. I adjust the exposure and then I step back and take the photo. It takes a little bit of practice, but it’s easily done. I find that back-lit photos like this one look best with a dark background. If the sky is the background it will look white in the photo.
If you have a camera where you can’t use spot metering or expose manually just move in really close and have your subject take up most of the frame. Your camera will then choose a more correct exposure for your subject than the background. The other option you have is turning on the flash. This will light the front of your subject while exposing properly for the background as well. You might have an option on your camera for fill flash. This is the situation to use it.
So next time you’re at a graduation, birthday party, wedding, family gathering, or just outside in the backyard look around to find where the best lighting would be before you start snapping photos. You’ll be much happier with your results.
Next time: Where to find the best lighting in your house.
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funny photo…
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