Lighting Cure?

galaxycowpoke

I'm thinking about lighting solutions for a shot like this one that I captured last Sunday. Sunlight was coming from the left. Trees diffused the light, but it was splotchy. I used a bit of front fill, that was it, no reflectors.

I'm thinking maybe a large diffuser between subject and sunlight to even out the light. And then maybe a reflector behind and to the right of the subject to bounce some sunlight for highlighting of the hair and more separation from background. Any other suggestions?

BTW, the *real* subject rescheduled, so my wife stood in for some practice shots that day.

wxwax

Sounds like a fun project.

Will a diffuser even out the lights and shadows? I thought it would only stop down the light, not even it out.

galaxycowpoke

wxwax wrote:

Sounds like a fun project.

Will a diffuser even out the lights and shadows? I thought it would only stop down the light, not even it out.

In addition to reducing the light somewhat a diffuser will, of course, also soften it. But I've never really used a diffuser with light filtered through a tree; I'm thinking it will at least smooth out the uneven spots, if not eliminate them.

Murphy66

I have had some success using my flash and the Lightsphere II from Gary Fong. You can point it at your subject in outdoor situations and it gives a really nice diffused light. It really fills nicely.

galaxycowpoke

Murphy66 wrote:

I have had some success using my flash and the Lightsphere II from Gary Fong. You can point it at your subject in outdoor situations and it gives a really nice diffused light. It really fills nicely.

Thanks, Murphy. I was using a Lumiquest bounce diffuser mounted on the flash for this shot. I haven't used it in a while and probably had the flash a bit underpowered as a result. Coincidentally, I ordered a Lightsphere to try just before reading your message. It will be interesting to see what it does with tree shade.

Maybe I'm overthinking it. It could be as simple as boosting the fill. But I think I'd still like to bring down the highlights a bit (from the filtered sunlight) with an overhead diffuser before applying front flash fill.

pathfinder

You really have to be careful shooting portraits in the dappled shade of trees - if you get the dappled shade and sunlight on folk's faces it is impossible to rescue the shot.

I'm not sure a diffuser will really help in that lighting situation much either.

I would be interested to hear from folks who have actually shot in that situation - dappled shade/sun with a diffuser.

I think real shade with a reflector will be more successful.

jfriend

Some thoughts...

Saxon wrote:

I'm thinking about lighting solutions for a shot like this one that I captured last Sunday. Sunlight was coming from the left. Trees diffused the light, but it was splotchy. I used a bit of front fill, that was it, no reflectors.

I'm thinking maybe a large diffuser between subject and sunlight to even out the light. And then maybe a reflector behind and to the right of the subject to bounce some sunlight for highlighting of the hair and more separation from background. Any other suggestions?

It seems like you have to avoid the splotchy, filtered sunlight as already discussed. A large diffuser should work fine as it wil block most of the intensity of the direct beams of light. It would probably take too much fill to try to overpower it.

It looks to me like you could have used a little more fill to light up the subject's left side (viewer's right).

The white balance seems challenging here. It looks like you have three different kinds of lighting competing here: direct sunlight, reflected sunlight (e.g. shade) and fill flash. The subject's skin tone looks a little too blue to me, but the background looks about right. Looking at skin tones in CMYK, it seems like there's too much cyan and it could use some warming.

The brightness of the background (particularly on the right) makes it difficult to achieve the tonal separation between foreground and background that you asked about. You could think about stopping down more and use more fill to light the foreground (thus reducing the apparent brightness of the background), but you'd have to experiment with that to see if it works for what you want. I wonder if you can change the angle you shoot or the time of day to avoid the specular highlights on the right side of the photo. To my eye, they seem to compete for my attention and draw eyes away from the subject. You might also be able to eliminate a little of it by shooting from a little higher angle too.

I know you didn't ask for comments about the pose, but this particular pose just emphasizes too much thigh and makes it look disproportionate.

Blurmore

I think it really depends on how intense the light is cutting through the trees. The shady blotches can be the worse and the simple easy way to cure it is this. Expose 1/2 stop less than the ambient full sunlight, and kill the shadow with fill flash. This will work 100% of the time so long as you either use a autoflash such as a Vivitar 283, or you are willing to ride the FEC on a TTL flash. The theory here being that you won't BLOW the highlight portion of the dapple, and you kill the shadow with strong flash. Honestly it is easier to achieve with a non TTL flash as ETTL, ATTL, QTTL and anything else usually muff this situation without the appropriate FEC. Using a diffuser CAN give soft light if you can totally block/diffuse all the dapple, but most of the time your diffuser isn't going to big enough to kill dapple on the shirt and the face. This would be most effective with low angle sun cutting through the trees rather than 2pm sun cutting down. It is possible to catch a big dapple/hole with a relfector and puke it BACK up onto the subject's face and give good light in the eyes and open up the shadows creating a soft glow and minimizing the glaring highlight. I find it useful with single subjects (with cooperative wind) to just tweak their position untill the dapples don't hit them, or better yet give a good strong hairlight. You can also use a reflector to BLOCK the dapple ( I did this ALL the time as an assistant, always hire a tall assistant with long arms) completely and put the face in total shade, useful for groups of 3 or 4.