How to take a good outdoor portrait at night

Following the film crew, the camera came to the United States of America on the other side of the ocean. Our main characters in this issue are a newly married couple and a wedding photographer.

The couple insisted on taking outdoor portraits in the park Woods where they first met. Away from the road, the ambient light is almost zero, which is a challenge for photographers.

"There's nothing wrong with zero ambient light? Can you improve ISO as soon as possible and extend the exposure time? " Well, there is a difference between low ambient light and zero ambient light.

2. Annoying "inverse square law"

People can see it, but the background is completely black, not romantic at all, and it completely loses the significance of coming to the park to shoot. It is best to shoot in a black background shed. Why is this happening?

This situation is called inverse square law. Specific to the problem of lighting, simply put, the farther away from the light source, the less light it emits.

Therefore, couples who are close to each other are brighter and the background in the distance is very dark. You don't want an all-black background, you have to find another way.

Also light up the environment

The background of this photo is much brighter because of the close light source. Although there is still a big brightness difference between the environment and the characters, it can provide some scene information, which basically meets the requirements of couples.

Make the light more natural

The headlights on the right side suddenly appeared, and the light frame could be seen vaguely; The moon in the background is very small, which contradicts the brightness of ambient light; The subject couple is not prominent enough. These are all problems that need to be solved.

In order to make the subject stand out, the photographer shot orange light on the left side outside the picture, which added a warm tone to the couple's face, both warming and highlighting the subject.

But isn't it strange and disobedient that orange light suddenly appears in the middle of the night? So the photographer put a kerosene lamp in the picture and made a reasonable explanation for this orange light.

Everything is to make the light source in the picture more "natural". The treatment scheme of right headlight also follows this principle. The following figure shows the effect after post-processing.

5. Make good use of street lamps

The first is the sense of nature. Photographic lighting has a small range and looks hard, while street lamps have a large range and soft light, which looks more natural.

The second is color tone. Photographic lighting is bright and close to white, while road lighting is warmer, which provides a better atmosphere for photos.

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Lighting is the key to outdoor portrait photography at night. We should not only illuminate people, but also illuminate the environment, and try to look natural.

So if possible, try to use the existing ambient light. Street lamps are a good choice.

By the way, why take outdoor portraits at night? Because there may be beautiful scenery at night that you can't see during the day, it can be used as a perfect portrait background.