13 tips for Outdoor Portrait Shooting
Nowadays, more and more people tend to go out of the indoor studio and shoot outdoors. Compared to indoor shooting, everyone is more willing to have an intimate contact with nature. The corners of the clothes that are raised in the wind, the feet covered with soil, the messy hair in the air… all these make the photos look more real and moving. Because there are many uncontrollable factors in outdoor portrait shooting, portrait photographers always face various unknown challenges when shooting.
Today, let’s take a look at 13 suggestions for improving outdoor portrait photography given by photographers, hoping to help everyone who is trying outdoor portrait photography.
Three simple points, as long as you do it, you can guarantee the quality of all the photos you take, including portrait photography, of course. That is proper exposure, accurate white balance and clear focus. These three basic shooting points, so far, I have not found a way to replace them.
- Choose the focus by yourself
When you select the camera’s autofocus option and let the camera help you select the focus point, your shooting will embark on a path that lacks originality. The camera’s autofocus function is usually designed to automatically focus on the object closest to the lens. Like my 1DS Mark III, it automatically selects the group as the focus point, and then calculates an average distance as the “best focus” among all the selected focus points, which is completely trivial. Therefore, you should choose the focus point yourself when you take a photo, because you are the final decision maker for your photo.
- Always focus on the eyes
The eyes are the windows of the soul. You will find that in any good portrait photo, the eyes are an element that cannot be ignored. Of course, the decisive factor that constitutes an excellent portrait is not only the eyes, but more importantly, the strong feelings that the eyes convey. Therefore, when you shoot, you should make the subject’s eyes the sharpest point in the photo. Moreover, when you use a large aperture to focus on the model’s eyes, the lens will blur the background and make your skin look softer and smoother.
- Use a large aperture to get a shallow depth of field
There are many reasons to buy a large aperture lens, the most important reason is that it can help us get a shallow depth of field when shooting. You can use F2.8 or F4 large aperture lens to get the soft natural light needed for portrait shooting, and it can naturally blur the background.
- Try not to shoot portraits with a focal length less than 50mm, use a focal length of 70mm or longer
You may always hear complaints about “why my face looks so big” from the subject. You should know that any focal length below 70mm will more or less cause distortion of the subject, although it will not be noticeable before it is below 50mm. Therefore, it is best not to shoot portraits with a focal length less than 50mm. The compression effect of using a telephoto lens can increase the degree of blurring of the background bokeh. Therefore, most of my portrait shots use a focal length of 120mm to 200mm.
- Shoot in RAW format
I have said this sentence more than a thousand times, and I will certainly say it tens of thousands of times. The RAW format is a compilation of unmodified data recorded by the camera’s sensor during exposure, and is the original digital source of the photo. When you shoot in JPEG format, it seems to be no different from using RAW format, but when you edit images, you will find that images shot in JPEG format are missing a lot of data, and RAW format images can allow us to be bigger Edit photos to a degree.
You can recall that when the camera’s white balance is set incorrectly, you have to spend a lot of energy and time trying to adjust the color cast afterwards. At this time, if you shoot in RAW format, you can easily save the photo because it allows you to restore the original color of the image.
- Carry a gray card with you to adjust the white balance
When you open Adobe Camera Raw or other RAW image editing software, there will always be an option in the application asking you to choose a custom white balance. It is usually a dropper-style icon. You can adjust the white balance of the image by clicking on the neutral gray that you think is correct.
Imagine you changed 4 scenes and took nearly 800 photos in one shot, but those photos were all taken with the automatic white balance set by the camera for you. There are 800 different white balance values for 800 photos, which is simply a nightmare for the later stage.
If you can set the white balance with a gray card in the first shot according to your shooting theme in every scene, you will save a lot of time in later stages. As long as you open the photo you are most satisfied with in the post software, and then use the eyedropper to select the white balance, then you can synchronize the white balance adjustments of the rest of the photos, thus saving a lot of precious time. (If you plan to make better use of your time, the smartest way is to set the white balance every 30 minutes or as the light changes during shooting.)
- Avoid direct sunlight
Direct light is dazzling, it is easy to squint your subject, and produce thick shadows on the face. You can avoid shadows by not shooting under direct light. I have always believed that only soft light can portray the natural appearance of people, and proper exposure and correct white balance can make your photos more eye-catching.
- Be more careful when shooting on a cloudy day
The cloud layer is nature’s soft box, the appropriate thickness of the cloud layer can enrich the color of your photos, and refract unexpected light.
- Use reflected light
Learn to control the direction of light, use reflected light, and try to simulate the lighting effects of a photography studio. It is not a good idea to place the subject directly opposite the sun, unless you want a sharp silhouette. An effective method is to wait for the clouds to move to cover the sun, which can often produce a very obvious contrast effect.
- Use existing reflected light
For example, you can use a large white car nearby as a ready-made reflector when shooting, as long as it is not painted with a layer of off-white. (A color tone that can change the white balance of a photo.)
- Understand the F16 guidelines
You must have a correct exposure benchmark in your mind, especially when you lack metering tools on the scene. The F16 criterion is that when you set your camera’s aperture value to F16 under sunny conditions, the shutter speed will be the reciprocal of the current ISO sensitivity. For example, if your camera ISO is set to 100 and your aperture is set to F16, the shutter speed should be one hundredth of a second. In cloudy conditions (or when shooting in the shadows), you just need to use an F8 aperture instead. Of course, if you have a light meter or a gray card, it is best to accurately measure the exposure. (Note: The procedure of measuring exposure with a gray card is not the same as setting a custom white balance.)
- Bring a sheet and some clips from home
Do you have used old silk sheets in your storeroom? Go find it out. Of course, you can also choose to buy the cheapest white bed sheet. A king-size bed sheet can be made into a magical and cheap diffuser. The way the bed sheet becomes a diffuser for sunlight: wrap the edge of the bed sheet on a branch or rope to filter the direct sunlight, especially the light from directly above the subject. (Note that the bottom of the bed sheet is tied with a string of stones to prevent the bed sheet from being blown into your shot by the wind.)
- Don’t let irrelevant scenes into the picture
We have already said to keep the camera focused on the eyes of the person and let your mind focus on the overall idea of the photo. Wires, billboards, weeds, garbage, and sometimes even trees can disrupt the focus of people’s attention to the photo, so make sure the picture is tidy. The last and most important point: enjoy the whole shooting process, the emotions you indulged in the shooting will finally be reflected in the photos.
Shooting Skills Under Rainy and Cloudy Conditions
Clouds are indescribable. As we said before, they are like a huge blanket that can disperse the direct light of the sun, giving our photos richer colors and tension. In the same way, clouds can deceive you in ways you can’t imagine, allowing you to shoot with the white balance that you think is correct throughout the day.
When you are shooting on a cloudy day, the custom white balance is particularly important. Each photo has a completely different color, and each color depends on two factors. First, for different time periods, as most people know, white balance changes with the time of day. Second, you must consider the unknown reflections of the light before it hits the subject. Different reflected lights can form different colors.
Also, pollution is changing the color of sunlight minute by minute. Even though it is not visible to the naked eye, the camera can sensitively catch this change. On a cloudy day, pollution particles and tiny water droplets were suspended in mid-air. The prism formed by the sunlight passing through the water droplets will reflect light in multiple directions on the polluted particles. This is the reason why the light is complicated in rainy weather.
You know, light is everywhere, it is just spread, softened and dispersed. In a cloudy day, the sunlight still has directionality, and things still have a back light. Use the compass to find out the position of the sun, then press the shutter crazy with your back facing the sun!