Beach Portraits

Beach Portraits

by William Lulow

Well, we are at the beach, so naturally, I was thinking about making some outdoor portraits. I am writing this before I actually plan do to the work, so the images are all in my mind at this point. My thoughts were to make a series of portraits with my long lens (Canon 135mm, f/2) and have someone hold my mainlight so that I won’t need any light stands set up in the sand. I also have in mind to shoot later in the day when the sun will be behind my subjects. The camera will be on a tripod in order to make sure the long lens is steady. I want the backgrounds to be very soft and I want the sun to make highlights on the subject’s hair. Let’s see how well I was able to make these images come out the way I envisioned:

Everything worked pretty well for this shot. I used a fill-in light from the left side of the camera and there was someone walking behind the subject here, but with the long lens the person was just about indiscernible so it did not detract from the overall feel of the image.

This one came out pretty close to what I imagined although the light was a bit too low. But the effect is still nice. The sky was basically the background although it looks like it could have been on a set. I cropped the image a bit and did some basic retouching altering the colors a bit to make them warmer.

This one was also pretty close to what I imagined. The background also was very soft and again, I retouched the overall tone to make it a bit warmer as well.

So, all in all, the only thing I didn’t have time for was to make the poses closer to what I had in mind. The subjects were young ladies who apparently didn’t want to sit on the sand, but the expressions and the lighting were pretty much what I had seen in my mind.

All images where shot with the camera on a tripod, with my 135mm lens, as I mentioned at just before sunset. Exposures were 1/100th of a second at f/5.6 with an ISO of 100. When you use any type of flash or flash fill-in, the speed of the flash unit usually takes over the shutter speed. You can use a slower shutter speed, but the speed of the flash unit is around 1/250th of a second so you can’t shoot at a faster shutter speed than that. If you do, you will only get half the frame exposed. Keep your shutter speed at 1/100th of a second if you use any type of flash as your main light source.

Then, I decided to make an image of the three girls together with the sunset as a backdrop:

For this shot, again I had someone hold the fill-in light, which was actually the mainlight and even though the light on the subjects was just right, I still needed to retouch the background to make it glow a bit more, so I selected the girls, then highlighted the background and improved the tone with the “Vibrance & Contrast ” setting.  Then returned to the main selection and did some adjustments on overall tone with he “Hue & Saturation” tool. This one was shot with my 20mm f/2.8 lens in order to capture the three girls and the background. Exposure was f/5.6 at 1/100th of a second with an ISO of 100.

Overall, I was pretty happy with the results and the parents loved the images.