Outdoor Portraits

Note: I have written about shooting portraits outdoors and my technique, but here is another article on the topic.

 Outdoor Portraits

by William Lulow

I recently had some portraits to do outdoors at a client’s house. We decided to shoot in her back yard because it was a one-year-old’s “smash cake” celebration. It was just easier to do this outside because the weather was nice and the cleanup would be a lot easier. I knew there would be some cropping and retouching at the outset. Look at the sun dappling on the background. Here is what the setup looked like:

There wasn’t any wind to speak of, so I was able to use by large, portrait umbrella. I normally carry some sandbags to steady the umbrella stand, but didn’t on this particular day. You might think that shooting outdoors shouldn’t require any additional light, and sometimes it doesn’t, but when I shoot portraits I always like to surround my subjects with light from my large light source. For one thing, it directs the light much better than just normal, outdoor light and it serves to give the portraits that crisp, sharp look that I normally get with my studio shots. Here’s another view:

As you can see here, I had one light trained on the background and the mainlight lighting my subjects. I could get away with using just the one background light because the hazy, bright sunlight did a good enough job of lighting the white backdrop. I knew I was going to have to do some retouching however to get the background the pure white tone that I like, because there was a very little filtered sunlight making the background tone a bit uneven. So, here is the original image along side the retouched version:

This was a fairly easy retouching job. First the image of the baby with the cake was selected. Then an inversion created. Then the background was made an even tone of white. Finally, some contrast was added.

The client also wanted some family shots at the last minute. I did not bring a larger, white no-seam with me, so I thought that I could retouch it in and it turned out to be easier than I thought:

Here, with just a little bit of cropping and background retouching, I was able to make an image that was close to what I would get in the studio.

When shooting children, I always like to shoot on pure white because it helps document the growth by keeping the background a plain color. It’s not always necessary however. Here is a family photograph just using a back yard location with no particular background:

The one thing I try to do when I shoot any portraits outdoors is to place the subject(s) so that the sun acts as an accent light. It just gives the photograph some extra “pop.” It entails placing the subjects with their backs to the sun and makes it necessary to fill in the shadows with some extra light. In the baby shots above, I was using a studio setup outdoors. In the above family image, the sun supplied the necessary highlights on the subjects’ hair and the entire shot was filled in from the front with the addition of two portable speedlights. Here are more examples:

The one below of the wedding couple was retouched to add the dramatic sky!

As a matter of course, I always use a flash for outdoor portraits. Sometimes, if I don’t carry extra lights with me, I use the built-in flash on the camera to provide a little fill in light where it may be necessary:

This shot was made as I was losing light. There was a hint of the sun off to the right which provided a faint highlight on the subject’s hair, but I just popped up the camera’s flash to fill in the shadows in the front a bit.

There are many things you can do with light when you are shooting outdoors. As I mentioned, I am always aware of light and especially when on location, I use the sun as a highlight. In order to do this, you must fill in the shadows it causes if you want to see enough detail.