6 tips for shooting great portraits in bright sunlight

Wednesday 12 December 2018, 12:38 by Elja Trum | 16,265 views | 6 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

In summer, the warm weather invites you to go outside and take photos. But good weather often comes with bright sunlight too. Not the best light for shooting portraits. With these 6 tips, you can still get to work on a sunny day.

1. Find a shady spot

Perhaps the most obvious option: find a nice shady spot. There is almost always some shade nearby. For example, next to a building, under a tree or under a parasol.

Remember that even in the shade, you still have to deal with the direction of the light. If you are standing next to a building, for example, the side where the building is will be the darker side, while plenty of light still comes from the other side.

This light is often beautifully soft, because it is indirect light only. Personally, I often like to let the light fall on one side of your model's face. The other side of the face is then darker, which brings out the shape of the face nicely.

There is a large building with dark bricks on the left here. Indirect, soft light comes from the other side

2. Use a translucent screen

No shade nearby? Then you can easily create pleasant soft shade yourself by using a translucent screen.

Translucent screens are often included in those cheap 5-in-1 reflector kits. It is easiest if someone is with you who can hold the screen up, but you can also hold it yourself or use a tripod with a clamp.

Without and with a translucent screen, cropped from a video
I cropped the image above from my recent Portrait Photography in Practice course at Photofacts Academy. You can watch the complete video here.

3. Use a reflector to lift the shadows

With a translucent screen, you block the bright light, but you can also use the opposite method: add extra light to the dark shadows.

You can do this easily with a reflector. A white reflector often works best in these situations. Silver creates light that is too bright and gold gives your photo an ugly colour cast.

With a reflector, you retain the highlights, but the shadows are less harsh

4. Use fill flash

Instead of a reflector, you can also choose to use a flash. Simply using the flash on your camera can work well in these situations to soften harsh shadows.

5. Give your photo a rugged style

Harsh sunlight does not necessarily have to be bad. Harsh shadows are often unattractive, but sometimes they can simply suit the style of your photo. So you can also choose to use them deliberately.

Using harsh sunlight for a more rugged style
Stronger contrasts often work well in black and white. I deliberately converted this photo to black and white too. I even added extra contrast to the already harsh, high-contrast light.

» Read more about this photo in this article

6. Lift harsh shadows

Over the past few years, the dynamic range of cameras has continued to improve. Your camera can therefore capture a fairly large difference in contrast, especially if you work in RAW format.

Shadows lifted in Lightroom
In Lightroom or, for example, Camera RAW, you can easily lift the shadows in your photo. Combine this with reducing the highlights and a photo is much less contrasty.

Want to learn more about portrait photography?

At Photofacts Academy, our online learning environment for photographers, we have several courses on portrait photography.

- Portrait Photography Tips (Elja Trum)
- Portrait Photography in Practice (Elja Trum)
- Business Portrait Photography (Maurice Jager)
- From Image to Art (Micky Hoogendijk)
- Basic On-Location Flash Course (Piet van den Eynde)

You can follow these courses for two weeks with a free trial membership.

Dit artikel is voor het laatst bijgewerkt op 12 december 2018.
De eerste publicatiedatum is maandag 18 juni 2018, 23:32.

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