SLR Backlight Portrait Photography Skills

SLR Backlight Portrait Photography Skills

In late autumn, the sun shines through the cracks in the Woods and reflects on the golden leaves and grass. In this soft light, it is easiest to shoot a nearly perfect backlit portrait. The following is the information I have compiled for you about SLR backlight portrait photography skills for your reference!

How to take a backlit photo

Understand the angle of light

The angle of light is also important. For example, the midday sun can be used as a backlight. However, due to the high angle of the light source, the effect produced at this time is closer to the top light, and the intensity of the backlight is relatively small.

When the sun approaches the horizon in the morning or evening, the objects on the ground are basically completely illuminated by the backlight, so the effect is more prominent and intense. In the same way, winter is more suitable for taking backlight photos than summer, because the position of the sun arc is very low in winter, and the effect of backlight is better.

Understand the lighting conditions

Looking at the scene from the perspective of backlight may make people feel difficult to control. There are indeed a few problems that need special attention, but once you master backlight shooting, you will have a powerful means to make your photos unique and make other photos taken along the light instantly eclipsed.

Not all situations and all subjects are suitable for backlighting, so we need to be cautious about any experimental creation. Learning to accurately understand the lighting conditions and choosing the right person for backlight is the key to the success of backlight. Theoretically, any form of light can be used as backlight, but the stronger the light, the better the backlight effect.

Exposure and metering modes

Even if the subject and light form are not mentioned, there is only one thing that can determine the success or failure of backlit photos: exposure. As long as you master the correct exposure, you can almost completely control the backlight. The important thing is that you need to eliminate the influence of background, so that the subject can be exposed correctly. For most subjects, it is not wrong to choose a metering mode according to the overall situation of the picture, such as evaluation metering or matrix metering.

However, if you still choose this metering mode when shooting against the light, it is almost doomed to failure, because the light from the background will seriously mislead the metering system, making the subject seriously overexposed and even become a silhouette. To avoid this problem, you need to switch to spot metering or area metering mode, so that you can only measure the area of the subject more accurately. In this metering mode, the background light will not affect the camera's judgment, and the subject can get the correct exposure.

Select spot metering mode to directly meter the subject. This metering mode can ensure that your subject can be exposed correctly. If your SLR camera does not provide spot metering mode, you can also use the following methods: shorten the distance or lengthen the focal length, let the subject occupy the whole field of vision, shoot in manual mode, and then re-compose.

Enhance the texture of the subject

Especially for shooting transparent or translucent objects, such as flowers, plant branches and leaves, backlight is the best light. Because, on the one hand, backlight illumination can improve the brightness and saturation of light-transmitting objects, and make plain transparent or translucent objects show beautiful luster and good transparency under forward illumination; On the other hand, the brightness difference between the transparent object and the opaque object in the same picture is obviously widened, and the light and shade are opposite, which greatly enhances the artistic effect of the picture.

Enhance the rendering of the atmosphere

Especially in the morning and evening of landscape photography, the light and shadow modeling method with low angle and large backlight is adopted. Reflection paints rosy clouds as dyes, clouds as transpiration, and mountains, villages and trees as ink paintings. If mist, canoes and birds are added, it will cause a deep sound in vision and psychology, which will make the work deeper in connotation, higher in artistic conception and stronger in charm.

Enhance the depth of the picture

Especially when shooting in the morning or evening with backlight, due to the different media conditions in the air, the color composition has changed from far to near: the foreground is dark, the background is bright, the foreground color saturation is high, and the background color saturation is low, resulting in the whole picture from far to near, the color from light to thick, and from bright to dark, forming a subtle sense of spatial depth.

Enhance visual impact

When shooting in reverse light, due to the increase of the proportion of dark parts, quite a lot of details are blocked by shadows, and subjects with simple lines or small light receiving area suddenly appear in the picture. This large light ratio and Gao Fancha give people a strong visual impact, thus producing a strong artistic modeling effect.

In the backlight scene, the character's hair will be more obvious and beautiful, the edge line of the body will also be presented, and the whole character will become more three-dimensional. This is also an important reason why many people in the field of photography like backlighting.

How to shoot a portrait in backlight?

Backlight shooting time

Dali is a good place. You can shoot backlight 200 days a year. Favorite shooting seasons are winter and spring. In winter, the light is soft and transparent, and the film keeps warm. The outdoor backlight shooting time starts before sunset 1 hour, and the best film is shot at this time. You can shoot against the light in the afternoon, but the light was still hard at that time. The indoor backlight time is different, because it is dark indoors, and it is usually taken at noon when the light is strongest, which can cause obvious backlight contrast indoors.

Outdoor sunset backlight

Indoor backlight

Parameter setting of backlight shooting

The most important setting is manual exposure, because the contrast of light is too large and it is often necessary to re-compose, so aperture priority and shutter priority are not reliable. The best way is manual exposure, which is the advantage of the digital age. Usually, I take a photo according to the aperture, then play it back, and increase or decrease the shutter according to this exposure, which can completely ensure that the photo I take is the effect I need. Of course, if it is a movie, I can only rely on experience.

In addition, the white balance is automatic, and there is no drift. The focus must be set to single focus to facilitate composition, and everything else is the default setting.

Two tips to solve the difficulty of focusing with large aperture

Backlight affects focusing very much, so many large aperture lenses are difficult to focus when shooting. Here are two small methods for your own use:

1, block the light with your hand, and then let go after the focus is on your face;

2. Let a person's face block the light first, and then make a composition for Mitsudeki after focusing.

I usually use the second method when shooting, because re-composition can control the degree of backlight well and achieve the desired effect. A little attention is paid to the manual exposure mentioned before, because the light ratio is very large, and other exposure methods are likely to have exposure deviation.

About shooting equipment

The equipment I use is 5D2, and most small fresh photographers choose 5D2. Personally, 5D2 is very suitable for backlight shooting, because its tolerance is very good, which is very important in backlight shooting. Whether the highlights in the backlight are overexposed or not is the most critical in the early stage. I have also used Nikon of several friends, and the highlight of 5D2 can keep more details under the same exposure data.

The lenses are Canon 35 F 1.4, 85 F 1.2, 70-200F2.8, but more than 80% of the films are 35. I like 35 very much, which can bring more scenes. At the same time, just blurring can make people feel immersive, and focusing is better than 85 F 1.2.

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