A Daylight Outdoor Portrait

Selecting a scene:

For this lesson, we found a scene on the beach with the waves breaking softly in the background and the sun beginning to rise just off to the left and in the background. This position of the sun will allow us to use the sun as our hair light, and then bounce the sun back in to the subject to create our lighting pattern.

In figure 1, we see our assistant setting up the light stands in the general area where we will set up the LitePanel reflectors and we see the lighting direction in the sand.

Our next step was to spread a blanket out on the sand and pose our model. We then shot a photo without any reflectors to give us a starting point for our exposure evaluation.

We set our camera's exposure settings to 1/125 @ f/8.5 and took a shot.

In figure 2, we see the background scene exposed properly but we have very little detail on the subject's face.

Balancing Foreground and Background with LitePanels

So with this as our starting point, we set up a Photoflex 39 x 39 LitePanel frame and installed a white/soft gold cover with the white side facing the subject. We then set up a second LitePanel, a 39 x 72, and installed a white/soft gold cover, again with the white side out.

We placed the first LitePanel, the 39x39, to camera right at 45 degrees from the camera and had an assistant hold it so that it caught the sun and reflected it back in the model's face. We then set the second LitePanel to camera left at 45 degrees and had our second assistant do the same as the first (figures 3 and 4).

Note: A Main and T Clamp on a Litestand works well if you do not have assistants.

Selecting Your Exposure

The exposure of our first shot (figure 2) was good for the background. Our set exposure will work well for us. We simply need to add light to the darker areas by reflecting sun light back on our model.

So we broke out the meter again and, as I took meter readings, our assistants adjusted the LitePanels until we balanced the light on the subject with the light on the background. We wanted to get the sense of backlighting, so we set the light reflections to meter about 1/2 stop less than the background or about f/11. With our lighting set, we posed our model and shot a photo (figure 6).

Our results in figure 6 show how the reflected light from the LitePanels have balanced the light on the subject with the light elsewhere in the scene.

In figures 5 and 6, we can see the comparison for before and after the addition of the LitePanels.

Choosing a camera angle

Now that we have our lighting established, we can play with the camera angle. In the previous figures, our camera was set to about 2 feet from the sand on a tripod. This camera position is interesting, but if we bring the point of view down to just off the sand, we see more of the beach and the surf making the shot much more interesting.

With the lens and exposure combination we were using, we could hand hold the camera and still get sharp images. So we removed the camera from the tripod and set it aside. I then got down on the sand (figure 7), framed up our model, and shot the next series of shots (figures 8-11).

In our final results series we see how the lower camera position has changed the look of the overall shot as well as the look of the model. These are some simple products and tips that can make your next outdoor photo shoot much more special.