Teach you how to take a backlit portrait.

Lead: Backlight is a favorite of many people, but to be honest, not many people can take clear photos. Most people take silhouettes, pale or burnt. Of course, in addition to the photographer's subjective intention, it should be the basic requirement to pass the backlight portrait. It happens that I especially like this kind of backlight shooting technique, and I have accumulated some meager experience, which I hereby share.

To teach you how to shoot a backlit portrait, the first thing to explain is that although this article is called "Later Dafa teaches you how to shoot a backlit portrait", I still recommend the method of filling the light in the early stage to reduce the light ratio in the backlit environment and make the photos have the best texture and distinct layers. But why should I write the later Dafa? Because for most amateurs, it is unrealistic to have an assistant to fill your light. Or daily shooting with family, it is unlikely that someone will fill the light. Therefore, in this case, the later Dafa is particularly important. You don't need to ask anyone for help. You just need a camera and a computer to shoot a backlit movie.

Secondly, although this article is about the later stage of Dafa, it does not mean that the earlier stage is not important. On the contrary, the early stage is very important. Backlight shooting scenes have many mistakes that are easy to make in the early stage, and even in the later stage, they can't save you. Therefore, the premise of the later Dafa is to choose a suitable method to shoot the early material according to the later demand.

Finally, the later Dafa, as the name implies, focuses on the later period. Using the tolerance of RAW, the highlights and shadow details in photos can be retrieved to the maximum extent. As for how to operate, listen to me slowly.

Precautions for previous backlight shooting:

1, try to avoid shooting at the light source. In other words, try to avoid direct light on the camera. In other words, try not to put the sun in the center of the picture. It is best not to see the sun in the picture. If you really want to include the sun in the picture, please try to put it on the edge. This is because the direct lens of the sun is prone to glare, and the whole picture is white. This is why many people clearly have enough exposure and accurate focus, but the photos are blurred. For example, the following situations:

The direct lens of the sun is prone to glare, and the longer the focal length, the easier it is to glare, so please avoid this situation when shooting. Of course, it is not impossible to bring the sun in. You can use some blocking objects, such as sunlight blocked by leaves, or sunlight from tall buildings on distant peaks, which can effectively reduce the influence of glare. Or the light source is far away from the center of the picture, it is a method to shoot with a lens with a short focal length. (Kneel down and thank the brothers in the group for providing negative material. In addition, in the case of direct sunlight lens, it is difficult to complete focusing, so we can only focus manually.

2. Use environment to transform point light source into area light source. Point light sources are prone to glare, while surface light sources are not. Therefore, according to this feature, we can make more use of the surrounding environment and turn point light sources into area light sources. For example, indoor white curtains can soften the sunlight outside the window into a surface light source, and it is easy to convert a point light source into a surface light source with or without frosted glass walls. Or use the reflection of the water surface. In short, as long as you are good at observing and thinking, you can always find a suitable method. It doesn't matter if you can't find it. You can still take good photos by referring to the first one.

Both of these photos use the waves on the water surface to convert sunlight into a diffuse light source, which not only cleverly outlines the portrait with backlight, but also gives the body a layer of Phnom Penh, and makes the portrait full of reflection, effectively reducing the light ratio.

3, not exposure. At present, among the data that can be stored in the RAW format of digital cameras, the highlight details are generally less than the shadow details. That is to say, the highlight part is difficult to press back through the later stage, but the shadow part can be easily brightened through the later stage to ensure enough details.

Later, Dafa:

Next, it's time to show the later Dafa, but before that, it needs to be emphasized again that backlight is the best solution, and the later Dafa is really helpless without light supplement.

1 principle. This is actually a way to retrieve highlights and shadow details using the original tolerance. Therefore, the premise of this method must be to shoot in RAW format and be familiar with the range of camera tolerance. For example, it is not impossible to retouch the ancestral CMOS of a toothpaste factory, but please try not to make too heavy adjustment, because if the highlight shadow is pulled too hard, it will be full of colorful and touching. In fact, the degree of light ratio adjustment in the future depends on the performance of your own machine. And this level requires a lot of shooting and later practice. This paper chooses a photo taken by A7S as a case. I chose A7S because it is definitely the most tolerable raw material in the camera I have ever used, and it can stand the later test. The highlight shadow exposure slider can be pulled as much as you want, and the later retouching is hearty.

2. Software. In terms of software, I use Lightroom, which is actually unnecessary. As long as I master the principle, whether it is Photoshop, capture one or any other software that can solve RAW, there is no hard requirement. The key is to master the principle of retouching.

Step 3. Look at the comparison chart before the previous step. Please take a look at several characteristics of the original picture: the sun is eccentric, the sun is blocked by clouds, the wide angle is 28 degrees, and the original picture is underexposed. These are all the precautions I mentioned before to verify the backlight portrait shooting.

(1) Retrieves shadow details. Taking children as reference, we can retrieve shadow details by adjusting exposure and shadow.

But if you simply adjust the exposure and shadow, will it make the picture look? Gray? This is because the shadow details are highlighted too much. So we need to lower the color scale of black to ensure the color scale of the picture, that is, to make the picture more transparent. If you know how to read the histogram, you can pay attention to the left area of the histogram. The black color scale area is seriously vacant. Therefore, we need to reduce the black level and fill enough black level on the left side of the histogram.

? Before and after adjustment

Take a look at the adjusted photos. This is very important. Many people think that their photos are opaque no matter how they are repaired, which is basically caused by insufficient blackness, which will lead to the lack of rich color levels in the whole picture. Gray? !

(2) Look for highlights. First, reduce the overexposed sunlight cloud by reducing the highlights and white levels.

Looking at the adjusted effect, the highlights are all back, but not enough. Keep working hard, let's try again to reduce the surrounding environment with radial gradient.

(3) adjust the details. Through the above two steps, the details of highlights and shadows have basically recovered, but some details are still not perfect. For example, the baby's face has reduced the overall exposure because of the high light, and it has changed back to an underexposed appearance. So you can brush out the child's body with a brush and adjust the local exposure.

At this point, the light and shade level of this photo has been basically finalized.

(4) color temperature adjustment. In order to set off the whole golden sunshine atmosphere, the color temperature, saturation and brightness were improved, and the following effects were achieved.

So far, the distance from the film is very close, but it needs some fine-tuning in color.

(5) color refinement. Because I want the warm color to feel more orange, I lowered the yellow color block to make the yellow look a little red and get the orange sunshine I want.

Finally, the color rendering of the shadow part is not enough, so I rendered a layer of brown in the picture with partial tones.

It's all done now. In terms of color, you can actually play freely according to your own preferences. Finally, post some backlit portraits. I wish everyone can take good-looking portraits.

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