Backlit Portraits
Shooting outdoors can create all kinds of difficulties for portrait photographers. Harsh sunlight often casts your subjects in an unflattering light and can also make it difficult for them to keep their eyes open. If you change the angle that you’re shooting at so that your subject is no longer staring into the sun, shadows on your subject’s face can pose problems, too, creating distracting, unflattering patterns on your subject’s face. Additionally, your subject might be underexposed and in the shadows whereas your background is overexposed and blown out. Another common issue is that shadows create distracting, unflattering patterns on your subject. The easiest way to solve this dilemma is just to shoot somewhere in the shade, creating a softer light. Some photographers might benefit from using a speedlite and diffuser so that your flash can light up the subject while your in-camera settings properly expose the background.
If these options aren’t available, or if you want to pursue a more dramatic, riskier shot, one strategy is to create backlit portraits. You can have your subject stand in front of the sun so that they block it out, helping bring down the highlights of your image. Shooting toward the light in this way can add dramatic flair and light up your subject’s hair with highlights. One strategy you can use is exposing the shot for your subject’s face, but this might lead to a blown-out background. If you’re going for more a high-dynamic range (HDR) shot, this isn’t ideal, but it can work well to emphasize your subject and add a cinematic touch. If the background is brighter than your subject, as will likely be the case with harsh sunlight, you can underexpose the subject and create a mask in post to bring up the shadows. The downside of this approach is that it can leave your subject looking unnatural, which is less than ideal for a portrait. One more tip to try when taking backlit portraits is that if there is anything white at the location of your shoot—sand on a beach or snow on the ground, for example—you can reflect light off of these surfaces. By using natural reflectors, you don’t have to drag reflectors along with you and hold them as you take photos.
