Under the Harsh Sunlight...

As promised, here is a techniques post on my last photo shoot. It was one of the simplest and yet trickiest of shoots. Hmmm, okay, that didn't make much sense, but I promise you'll get what I mean in a bit. (I used my 50mm lens for the whole shoot.)

I usually shoot in Av mode, but for this shoot I switched to manual because I was shooting into the light, which means you can't rely on your camera's metering mode. Shooting in manual gives you a lot more control with your exposures, but it also takes a bit more time to set your camera to the right functions, and when you switch locations and angles you'll probably have to adjust your functions again, but it's best to get used to it during an informal shoot than at an important function.

As you can see, my shutter speeds for these two pictures were very different. In the first picture, I had my subject standing in pretty much direct sunlight, so not only did I have to increase my shutter speed, I also had to increase the number on my f-stop. This is because shooting in direct sunlight exaggerates the shallowness of your depth of field, making it a challenge to get pictures that are in focus. You can see that even after I've increased my f-stop to 2, the subject is still somewhat in sliiiightly soft focus. At this point it's really a matter of preference whether or not you want your subject to be as focused as the second picture or to stick with this softer focus to maintain an ethereal feel.

This is one of my favorite images from the shoot. Basia was getting into position for a jumping shot and I just snapped this picture. Because of the wide aperture, the tree in the background is slightly fuzzy, putting more of the attention on the girl in the picture. In hindsight, I kinda wish I'd snapped another picture, this time with a slightly smaller aperture, so that I might have another version of this with everything in focus to compare to. Oh well...gives me more of an excuse to beg my friend for more shoots.

The image on the left was one of the trickier ones to take. Tricky because it isn't backlit; the light was shining from the right side of the subject, which could result in unflattering contrast. To remedy this, I had my subject walk towards me and snapped only after she walked into the shaded part of the path. The sunlight bouncing off the path behind her provided a bit of backlighting, which was a bonus. Still, I much prefer the effect of backlighting than sidelighting (is that a word?). You can see how much softer the effect of backlighting is in the picture on the right. This time, because the subject was in the direct shadow of a tree, I could afford to use as wide an aperture as I wanted to without worrying about an exaggerated depth of field. The picture on the right was taken pretty much under ideal lighting conditions. Backlight? Check. Big tree to pose subject under? Check. Gorgeous model? Check, check, and check.

I hope this post has been helpful...I would've liked to give a few tips on posing but Basia was born to model for the camera and I didn't really have to prompt her much, so we'll have to wait for another shoot for that! ;) Have a good weekend y'alls!