I haven't done a Behind the Image post in ages and I hear that you guys like them. SO. Here's another edition.
The image I've chosen to share about today was shot at Jade & Amy's wedding in St. George, Utah in June of this year. It's a portrait shot in full sun. My favorite type of lighting is backlighting where the background is full shade. But sometimes, like when you're in the middle of the desert, there is no shade to speak of. So this is a great trick for getting beautiful close-up portraits in full sun.
In Camera:
This image was shot in RAW with my Canon 5D Mark II, on manual, with a Canon 50mm 1.2 lens, at f1.2, 1/4000 of a second & ISO 100. This trick only really works if the sun is somewhat low in the sky. That's because you have to block it partially with the subjects' heads. I usually squat down a bit so that their bodies are fully blocking the sun. I lock focus and then move a bit (I probably look weird moving my upper body randomly from side to side) to get a variety of shots with the sun partially blocked by the subjects' heads. If you don't block the sun adequately, you'll get too much flare in your lens. But it's fun to have a little peeking through, like in this shot where the sun is coming through the veil giving it a soft, etherial feel. Another key to this shot is to overexpose slightly. If you properly expose according to your in camera meter, your subject will be drastically underexposed. As you can see in this shot, the subjects are the darkest part of the image. So I generally overexpose by 2/3 of a stop or so. I do the same thing when shooting in my favorite lighting situation -- backlighting with the background in full shade. In that instance, I don't care if the hair light isn't properly exposed, I want the faces exposed correctly.
This is the image straight out of the camera:
The image I've chosen to share about today was shot at Jade & Amy's wedding in St. George, Utah in June of this year. It's a portrait shot in full sun. My favorite type of lighting is backlighting where the background is full shade. But sometimes, like when you're in the middle of the desert, there is no shade to speak of. So this is a great trick for getting beautiful close-up portraits in full sun.
In Camera:
This image was shot in RAW with my Canon 5D Mark II, on manual, with a Canon 50mm 1.2 lens, at f1.2, 1/4000 of a second & ISO 100. This trick only really works if the sun is somewhat low in the sky. That's because you have to block it partially with the subjects' heads. I usually squat down a bit so that their bodies are fully blocking the sun. I lock focus and then move a bit (I probably look weird moving my upper body randomly from side to side) to get a variety of shots with the sun partially blocked by the subjects' heads. If you don't block the sun adequately, you'll get too much flare in your lens. But it's fun to have a little peeking through, like in this shot where the sun is coming through the veil giving it a soft, etherial feel. Another key to this shot is to overexpose slightly. If you properly expose according to your in camera meter, your subject will be drastically underexposed. As you can see in this shot, the subjects are the darkest part of the image. So I generally overexpose by 2/3 of a stop or so. I do the same thing when shooting in my favorite lighting situation -- backlighting with the background in full shade. In that instance, I don't care if the hair light isn't properly exposed, I want the faces exposed correctly.
This is the image straight out of the camera:
As you can see, the subjects are still slightly underexposed. In this instance, I'm ok with that because I need some detail in the veil. Because I don't want to lose any more detail in the veil, I'm going to convert this image to a .jpg and just do some selective dodging to lighten only the bride and groom's faces rather than brightening up the image as a whole.
So I basically don't make any adjustments in camera RAW. Here's the shot right before processing it to a .jpg:
So I basically don't make any adjustments in camera RAW. Here's the shot right before processing it to a .jpg:
After converting it to a .jpg I used the clone tool to get rid of the distracting hair over the bride & groom's faces. I don't always do this, I just knew this was one of my favorite photos, so I wanted to make it perfect. I then used Kevin Kubota's digital fill flash tool at around 18% opacity to selectively lighten Amy & Jade's faces. I love this tool. It's a lot like the dodge tool in Photoshop but much more natural looking. Then I ran a Kevin Kubota action -- X-Process Combo -- customized to around 18%. I use this customized action on all of my color images. This is the final result:
Let me know if you have any questions or if there are any other images you'd like to know more about! And if you found this tip helpful, click here to find out about other resources I offer photographers!
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