Alistair’s tips for photographing people in nature

1 Frame up

Try to find a space where it’s easy for you both to stand comfortably. It will already be tricky to get your shot in focus when you’re shooting with such a shallow aperture, so make everything else as easy for yourself as you can. Think about your background, too, and how you can surround your shot with the colours you like.

2 Take a few shots

Once you’re in place, just fire off a few frames. In the digital age this isn’t going to cost you anything and you might be pleasantly surprised at the results. Once you feel you’ve taken a good shot, it’s a good idea to show it to your model. It will give them an idea of the frame and often create some confidence that it’s looking good.

3 Camera settings

For this setup, my aperture dial is on the lens; I opened this as wide as possible, to f/1.8 in this case. When shooting outdoors, even in the cooler months, you can use a low ISO; here I went down to 160. You can then chose an automatic shutter speed or dial it in yourself. Today I was shooting around 1/1,250 sec, which meant the shot was crisp.

4 Enjoy shooting

A simple setup like this leaves you with plenty of time to experiment and have fun. Don’t worry too much if some of the foreground goes over your model’s face from time to time, or if the flowers won’t align in the manner you want them to. Shooting in nature has so many more benefits than just the final photograph.