Photograph a figure
Location, location, location
Decide where you want to position your figure. We used The Photographer’s Ephemeris app to work out where the light would be coming from and chose to shoot with the light behind us. This meant the light was hitting the trees and clouds in the background.
Dress to impress
Think about what your model is wearing. It can be difficult to see the details on dark clothing, and if you’re not careful your figure can get lost in the expansive background. The white dress in our example contrasts against the dark clouds, and plenty of detail is visible despite the moody conditions.
Camera settings
We froze any movement from the wind by using a shutter speed of 1/160 sec. The bright weather allowed us to shoot at ISO100, and an aperture of f/2 helped us blur the extreme foreground and produce a shallow enough depth of field to make the figure pop against the busy background.
Get low with your lens
With little height to our image, we had to get down low to frame a pleasing composition. Shooting from a low angle also makes your figure look more powerful. Our Nikon’s tilting screen was very handy here, and we ensured the level overlay was on to prevent capturing a wonky horizon.
Focus point
Set your Focus mode to Single-servo (AF-S) and your Af-area mode to Single-point. Use the joystick or touch screen to move the focus point over your figure, or half-press the shutter button and recompose. The latter can also be done in Continuous-servo (AF-C) mode if you’re using back-button focusing. Back-button focus will also enable you to shoot burst sequences without any fear of the camera refocusing or hunting.
Direct your model
Windy weather can make it difficult to communicate with your model once they’re in place. Talk them through your vision and discuss a variety of poses that you’d like them to cycle through beforehand. This enables you to take plenty of shots in quick succession, and experiment while doing so.