What are the shooting skills of backlit portraits?

Since entering the midsummer season, the portrait shooting activities in the author's various photography groups have obviously decreased. The reason is also easy to understand. The scorching sun is not only a test of the photographer's physical quality, but also a torture of the model. Therefore, the activities organized by the few remaining portrait lovers' gathering groups are generally to call on everyone to take a portrait of the sunset backlight when the sun sets. Inspired by this, I'd like to talk to you about the skills of shooting portraits in the back light of the sunset.

The place and time are very important.

When the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, the venue must choose a place where the sun can shine on the ground at sunset without shelter.

If you want the warm sunshine to hit your subject's face, or maybe you want the sunshine to pass through your subject's hair, then when choosing a venue, you should choose an open place, and the light passing through the forest or park trees is also full of surprises.

The shooting time should be within one hour before sunset, which is the experience after countless shooting. At this time, it is easiest to shoot a wonderful backlight effect.

If you miss the best shooting time, the color temperature and angle of sunlight will be very different, and the probability of taking wonderful photos is relatively small.

However, nothing is absolute. Sometimes, just when you think the sun is not suitable for shooting and are ready to put away your camera, you can get some unexpected results.

Spot metering shooting avoids "big black face"

This kind of portrait of the sunset glow is mainly because the light between the object you are shooting and the background light source is relatively large. If you choose the evaluation photometry used for taking pictures at ordinary times, the characters will be completely black.

It comes down to the algorithm in the camera, because the evaluation of photometry will preset all the suggested pictures as the basis of photometry. Due to the backlight environment, the light behind the portrait is stronger. After the average calculation, the camera will think that it is normal for the portrait to be dark in the front, which is also the reason why the backlight environment will shoot a "big black face".

At this time, we need to set the camera to spot metering. And face the light, and you can add some exposure compensation, because even face the light will not be very accurate, especially when shooting portraits with strong backlight.

If the shot person is fully exposed but the background is overexposed, we should consider using a reflector placed diagonally above the person to fill the face and reduce the light ratio between the background light and the face of the person.

In the details of the use of reflector, it is suggested that you use gold reflector to fill the light. Most of the current reflectors are X-in-one styles, generally including gold.

The golden reflector will add a touch of warm golden light to the model's face, which can perfectly blend with the sunshine in the sunset, and there will be no particularly large color temperature difference.

Cleverly hide the light source for focusing.

When backlighting, slight defocusing often occurs due to too strong light. At this time, you can open the real-time suggestion, enlarge the picture, and twist the focus ring on the lens until the face of the person is clear.

Another simple trick is to "hide" the light source behind the model first, and now focus it without strong light interference. After focusing, the shutter will keep half-pressed, slightly translating, and then press the shutter after the light source is emitted, which not only ensures the accuracy of focusing, but also achieves the aesthetic effect of backlight.

The key point of this move is "translation". During the translation process, the shutter should be kept in a half-pressed state, so the half-pressed way is actually a bit similar to manually locking the focus.

The focal plane will hardly change in the process of slight translation (pay attention to translation instead of moving back and forth, and the amplitude should not be too large), which ensures that the focusing is still accurate.

If you think the above method is troublesome, you can take a flashlight with you and use it to fill the light and focus on the model's face first.

Before shooting, when the camera is in focus accurately, turn off the flash. Although this method looks a bit low, it is still very practical to use it with point focusing.