How to take a satisfactory portrait photo under strong light?

Sometimes we may not be able to avoid taking pictures in strong light, even for some professional photographers. If you want to take portrait photos under strong light, what skills can help you take good-looking photos? We introduce eight ways to shoot portraits in strong light to help you open your mind.

1. shoot indoors and play with light and shadow.

If you have an umbrella or a device that can block out the sun, you can use them to create shadows to finish shooting. For example, it is also very interesting to wear an umbrella and a hat to shade the sun, reduce the light intensity on the subject and create patterns for the light to fall on him.

2. Move to an angle where the light looks interesting, or you can use reflected light.

Look at the angle of the light source more, which makes people look interesting. Maybe we can try to take a picture to see what it looks like. The photographer's position is lower than the model's position, or taking a silhouette like a reflection can make the photo look unique.

3. Use flash, auxiliary light or reflector.

At noon or in the afternoon, the shadow may be on the model's face, making the model's face look unclear, so shooting at the face with a flash will reduce the shadow problem, just like adding light. If you don't want to use a flash, you can choose to use a reflector instead to avoid the photos looking too dazzling.

4. Use a filter to reduce the light, the color is richer and the details are clearer.

In this case, there are two kinds of filters that can help: ND.

Optical filters and polarizing filters. They can reduce the amount of light entering the camera, make the image have richer colors, deeper colors, clearer details and reduce reflections.

5. Use a hood to reduce glare.

When the light emitted by the light source directly enters the lens, it will cause halo, which usually reflects and refracts with the lens, resulting in the appearance of light spots in the image. Wearing a hood will reduce the glare that may appear, but if you can make good use of the light, you can make the picture stand out and be different.

Now some brands of cameras and lenses have hoods, so you don't have to buy them anymore, but what if there is no hood? Holding cardboard or reaching out to block some light can also help.

6. Pay attention to white balance

Even if we can use lightroom or photoshop software to edit pictures, we don't want every photo to need this operation, because it may take time and it is very hard to do too much post-processing, so try to make the photos as perfect as possible.

7. Avoid close-ups and shoot from a wide angle.

Because the light itself may be strong, portrait photos look stiff at close range, so choose wide-angle shooting first. When the light is weak, you can come back to focus or take a close-up in front of the model.

8. I tried to take a black and white photo.

If you are tired of traditional composition shooting, you can try to switch to black and white photography. Even if there is no color, light and shadow will express the story and convey the emotion to the viewer through the picture.