Continuing our recent theme of shooting anytime and anywhere… today’s post is about shooting under broad daylight. Everyone has taken the “raccoon eyes” type of photos. You know? The kind where someone suggests the whole group turn towards the sun so all your faces are lit up. What usually results from this? First off, everyone is squinting because of the direct sunlight… then of course everyone has raccoon eyes; thanks to the shadows cast by the sun under your eyes. Below are some photos taken under broad daylight. We went to a nice secluded hillside down the street from us. Look through them and see if you notice any helpful techniques… then read through for a few tips on how to improve your broad daylight photos.
Below is the BTS photo of this hillside shoot. But first a few tips on how to improve your daytime photos.
Turn your back towards the sun: Take advantage of the free edge light the sun provides. It is the most natural and flattering edge light you can get. It will give your hair an auburn cast with a golden lining that will separate your subjects from the background. Turning your back also avoids the raccoon eyes. Turn your back, turn on your flash… easy as that. You’ll notice the bulk of our photos above with the sun behind Kay’s back. If you absolutely have to shoot with your face to the sun, avoid squinting eyes by having your subjects close their eyes, count to three and then open. Additionally, turn on your flash again to diminish the raccoon eyes effect. This works great with point and shoot cameras.
Lens flare: It can be a good and a bad thing. Lens flare will ruin your contrast levels (evident by some of the photos above), but sometimes you can use this to your advantage. To get a creative lens flare, just shoot directly into the sun. If composed correctly, you will get a beautiful mid-summery type of flare. If you want a cool looking star burst effect from the sun… compose to include the sun in your frame, then dial up your f-stop all the way up f18-f22 or so (adjust the settings to your liking). This will shrink your aperture making everything dark, but the sun will flare like a star.
Setting sun will give you more color: Start shooting around noon-2pm and the powerful sun will give you just a bright light. However, as the sun starts making its way to set, the strength of the sunlight will decrease allowing more color to come through. Look at the photos above again. From top to bottom… can you see how the change in quality and color of light (from 2pm to 4pm) affect the overall color tone in each photo? Skies will turn a dramatic red and the tint of color on your subject’s hair will illuminate. An additional benefit to shooting just an hour or two before the sun sets is that it is much easier to overpower the dimming sunlight with your speedlights.
Hope you enjoyed the photos and the tips.
prettygeekyphotos
prettygeekyphot
I don’t think my comment posted… *posts again*
OMG these are so ethereal and whimsical. Kay looks like a goddess or a… forest nympth or something LOL. Give her pointy ears and she can be an elf. Now I want to photo edit one of these and give her pointy ears LOL
>_>;;
lol i agree with the forest nympth!! a beautiful one! and i love all the shots with the daisy! very free spirit socal-ish! =)
I’m so Jealous Kay! You’re too photogenic and superb duperb gorgeous! Love all the photos. Keep them coming, because I simply love going thru all your pictures.
I love the feel of the photos…calm, peaceful. Kay is beautiful as always!
These are beautiful pictures! Maybe one day I can actually achieve this! [:
Quick questions, when you’re shooting at night, do you us manual or auto?
I noticed some of your older posts that you were able to get the circles of
confusions in the background.
@Lynn
When shooting at night I will shoot in manual. This allows me better control over the ambient light (shutter speed) and strobe light (Flash power) levels. The aperture setting is what controls your depth of field (think: creative focus/blurring). Open up your aperture (lowest f-stop number) to create the bubbly out of focus blurs in the background.
kay looks angelic in these photos! i love your eye for photography.
I see. Thanks! [: I LOVE shallow depth of field so I’m always at my biggest aperture.
I have a 50 mm F/1.8. I’d also love to see your future tips!
I love the 50 f/1.8 lens. It is one of my favorites. The majority of the photos above were taken with that lens. Thanks for the feedback Lynn, we’ll continue to include future tips as we go along.
Gosh, it looks so warm there.
Beautiful pictures!
Kay is so beautiful! How do you guys find these places? It looks like u guys had to hike a ways to get there since there is no one around.
@ Viola
When you live in the boonies like we do, there is never anyone around =p
Kay, you are beautiful. You do look like some kind of nature goddess =P Love the scenery as well.
Hey Ty and Kay,
These pictures are wonderful! Great lighting and cool techniques. Evelyn and I were reading on multiple camera tutorials and I came upon ‘every photographers carries a point and shoot camera’; now I’m just wondering if you could post a blog on pictures taken on a point and shoot camera. I think this will be a very interesting blog. It gives us an idea how we can get great pictures on an average camera.
Jerry
These are STUNNING… Ive actually been looking at them for weeks! Haha!
Just wondering:
Are both of your sb600′s set to full power?
What aperture and shutter speed did you use?
Thank you thank you thank you!
@Mandy
Thanks for the kind words Mandy. Yes, both SB600s were full power. The settings varied depending on the composition, but they hovered around f/3.2 and 1/800sec shutter.
Oh wow, I just love your blog, you’re so helpful with a lot of questions that have floated in my mind. I’ve been doing photography for about 2 years now but there’s soooooo much I’m learning each session…. basically that I need to learn more! :] I tend to book after the brightest part of the day because it’s intimidating! I had a question, you recommend using a flash with their backs to the sun… I don’t use a external flash trigger set up other than my speedlite for on location shoots yet, is there a recommended direction in which to have my speedlite pointed for the best results, I usually have to trial and error until I find a setting I like best but even then I may have to post process a bit. A wedding I did last week the light was pretty bad with lots of shadows through trees and I turned on my flash and found that it really did help as a fill. I just wasnt sure if you should have it pointed directly at the subject or at a certain angle. I did see that at times the white card really bounced the light but other times it fluctuates even in the same spot. I just read about the batteries you use in your flashes so I’m heading over to Costco as soon as they open tomorrow because they had a nice set there! lol I still haven’t explored light reflectors and found your other blog on that super helpful! I really want to try and learn this as it would make weddings and any other shoot so much easier not running from the sun lol your photos are absolutely beautiful, you’d think you took them on an overcast day… oh aren’t those beautiful when they come to the Central Valley! But it’s rare so I gotta get this stuff down!! :] Any tips would be super appreciated!! Thanks!!!!
wow I did not mean to write a story on your blog!!! :]
@Janette
Thanks for stopping by our blog. Which way to point your speedlight? When outdoors, you really don’t have a surface to bounce from, so any direction away from the subject would just be wasting flash power. If possible, the biggest improvement would be to get your light off camera for a directional off-axis light source. If you can’t do that, then have them face their backs to the sun and use just enough flash to light them up.
Thanks, that makes sense! I try not to have it directly at them to soften their skin so I have it pointed just over them. I am going to try and head to a camera shop today to get a trigger for off camera set up, is there one you might recommend?
Remote triggers can get expensive, make sure you do some research to ensure it will complement all of your gear/needs. Radio Poppers and Pocket wizards are tried and true. Lower end ones like Cactus can work too, but they can be limited to just “dumb” triggering. At the very least, you can get a hotshoe cord to stretch your flash off camera. Take a look at my gear page, it will list the gear I primarily use. Hope this helps.
Youre so pretty
omg….. soooo lovely!!!! <3
I love all your photos. Every single one of em. You guys are truly an inspiration to me, and I will continue keeping up with you guys. =) Thanks for sharing all the awesome photos and information with us.
One Trackback
[...] sunsets I’d ever seen and where I first wore the “ yellow dress“; another hillside where I almost laid on some doggie poo because I forgot it was there, lucky for me Ty hadn’t; [...]