NPhoto

Place in the sun

We’re usually told to keep our subjects out of direct sunlight, but with the right skills a sunny spot can lead to fantastic portraits, as James Paterson demonstrat­es

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One of the rules for portrait photograph­y is that you shouldn’t shoot people in direct sunlight. Without clouds to diffuse it, the light from the sun is very hardedged. We’re likely to get strong, unsightly shadows over the face, squinting subjects and greasy hot spots on the skin. The light is often at its most challengin­g at midday. As such, many photograph­ers would put the camera away, wait for cloud cover, or come back at the magic hour. However, the sun can be a wonderful light source if we know how to work the angles and manipulate light.

The main challenge with direct sunlight is the strong contrast it creates. The difference between the brightest and darkest part of the subject is so great that the shadows can look very dark. So we need to find a way to reduce the contrast, either by lifting the shadows, reducing the highlights – or doing both at once.

There are several ways we can achieve this. Here we’ve used an off-camera flash. In this sense we can think of the sun as a secondary light source.

Our subject has her back to the sun, so it’s hitting the edges of the figure and creating bold highlights along one side. From here, we need to lift the front side of the subject with a flash. We’ll explain how to do this and explore more options for sunlit portraits over the next few pages…

 ?? ?? www.digitalcam­eraworld.com
www.digitalcam­eraworld.com

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