This past weekend Brandon and I went out to shoot his senior portraits. Here I’ll discuss some ways to get studio-lighting effects using just the Sun and the natural landscape (the city) that already exists.
Catchlights
If you’re not familiar, catchlights are the little white reflections in the eyes of your subject. Often you get these from off-camera lighting with softboxes or umbrellas. They’re good because they add a pleasing, three-dimensional quality to the eyes, the focal point of the image.
In the below image, you can see how I got the nice, square, softboxish catchlights. We were standing in the entrance to the Howling Wolf which has three openings–the one out of the frame to camera-left is giving us the catchlight. This set-up also provided a nice fill light and back light, but more of that in the next section.
Backlighting & Fill Lighting
One of my go-to scenarios for shooting outside is to put the Sun behind my subject. This allows for three things: 1) my subject isn’t blinded by the Sun, 2) I have an even amount of light (ambient) around my subjects face, as opposed to the harsh shaddows the Sun will give, and 3) it creates a rim-light around my subject, separating them from the background. All three of these are studio-quality techniques typically done with off-camera lighting, but as you can see, with the right circumstances, all you need is the Sun (it was about 10:30 on a clear–and very freezing–January morning).
Fill lighting is designed to lessen the shadow of the key (main) light NOTE: In the last section, I have no fill light. Notice how the dark the shadow is. In the above example, our Key was the Sun coming from behind. The fill came from putting Brandon about four feet away from a huge white-painted building. This acted as a large, soft reflector from the Sun adding light to right side (camera left). I exposed for his face and let the rest take care of itself.
Modifying the Ambient
We found these cool, green doors framed with orange brick and though they’d make a good shot. As soon as Brandon sat down the Sun was straight in his eyes. Knowing any shadows from this would produce some harsh results, I flipped up one of the lids from the row of trashcans setting beside him. We got lucky and it was the right height and stayed propped up on it’s own. Sweet. The result was a nice, if not a little smelly, gobo (a form of light modifier that breaks up the key light: it goes between). At this point, I exposed for his face and the rest was history.
the Zen of One-Light
Okay, he wasn’t really zenning out or anything. I think I just caught him blinking. Or something.
For this, we were in a small warehouse, about 5000 square feet, with most of the front (camera right) open to the daylight. As well, there were some holes in the roof that helped keep the dark end from becoming a black hole. Of the techniques discussed here, this is probably the simplest. What makes this work is the angle the light is coming from: 45/45. That is 45 degrees from both the horizontal and vertical axis.
Also, the reason why this works with such dark shadows where the same effect in direct sunlight looks harsh is because by the time the light reaches Brandon it’s been bouncing around. This give it a soft, diffused quality.
Do a project! Coming tomorrow.