Shooting skills of portraits in sunset

Since entering the midsummer season, the portrait shooting activities of various photography groups have obviously decreased, and the few remaining portrait lovers generally call on everyone to take portraits of the sunset when the sun sets. The following are the shooting skills of the portrait of the sunset backlight that I shared. Welcome to read!

? 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 quite unsuitable 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 framing 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 live view, 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.

Use sidelight to add color to the work.

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.

The appearance of this side light will make the characters feel warm. This is also an important reason why many people in the field of photography like backlighting.

So how should this side light be shot? From the light level, this side light effect is more likely to appear in the side backlight. The side backlight is the light from the camera's left and right 135 back to the subject. The light receiving surface of the subject accounts for 1/3, and the backlight surface accounts for 2/3.

From the light ratio, the subject and background are both in the dark or 2/3 of the area is in the dark, so the light ratio between light and dark is large and the contrast is strong. Backlight will produce profile light for opaque objects.

In addition to pure beauty, side light can also emphasize the depth of space, explain the hierarchical relationship between distant objects, and add a bit of scene atmosphere to the whole work.

Generally speaking, the side light can not only hook the model with an intoxicating Phnom Penh, but also make the overall picture more textured and empty, so that the 2D plane picture has a 3D stereoscopic effect.

Be sure to shoot in RAW format.

I believe that most of the friends who will read this article are not professional photographers, so it is inevitable that there will be some situations in which the light ratio is not controlled accurately when shooting this kind of backlit portrait.

Although the early stage will be slightly insufficient because of the light conditions at that time and our own uncertainty, fortunately, in the current digital photography era, we will have a lot of room for adjustment in the later stage.

All this is attributed to RAW's unique storage algorithm, which allows photographers to make some lossless adjustments to the photos in the later stage to make them look more layered.

For example, in the early stage, because we didn't bring lighting accessories such as reflectors, although the background exposure was very accurate, the model's face in the photo looked very black. At this time, we can use the high tolerance of RAW format to brighten the dark areas of the picture and adjust the overall exposure to the normal state.

Photographers can also make photos look more dreamy and hazy through post-software and even adjust the color temperature of the whole picture to make the color of the work warmer. Therefore, I strongly recommend that you shoot in RAW format, which can provide greater flexibility compared with other image formats and give photographers greater flexibility in pre-shooting and post-production.

? Editor's conclusion:

Backlight of sunset is a very popular subject in portrait photography in recent years, and the audience can smell the sweetness brought by wind and wheat waves through the picture. The fresh smile and flying hair, if coupled with the warm color of the backlight when the sun goes down, will constitute a good memory for photographers and models.