We’re in Hollywood. I’m by myself. How am I going to get a nice image of Chanda because the sun is so awful here. Let’s take a look. I get asked this question all the time. Just tell me how you work? How do I conquer a lighting situation. So I’m going to go through exactly how I’m going to conquer this lighting situation to be able to photograph Chanda with that Capitol Records building in the background. I want the light to look good, both in the background and on the her, let’s take a quick look step by step at exactly what I’m going to do. The first thing I’m going to do if I photograph her in direct sun and I’ll take a quick shot of that to see what it looks like with her in direct sun and the Capitol Records building in the background. So next I want to get her into some kind of shade. I can either create shade with my reflector or I have her step back because we have a light pole right here. I’ve used the old light pole trick many times. I’ve got a full body shade on her now just because I set her back into the shadow of the light pole. Now if Chanda turns a little bit, because I want to turn her face back towards the sun. The sun is to my camera left. I want her to turn towards the light that’s coming on the camera left side. It’s going to give me a nice light on her face, even though she’s in the shadow. If I take a meter reading, I’ve lost about a half a stop. That’s not a problem because I’m going to expose for her face. I’m going to let the background be a little bit brighter, and it’s going to work absolutely fine. Now if I don’t have any shade whatsoever, I try to carry a pop up reflector with a translucent because I want the sun to come through that translucent and still give me a nice highlight on her face. But how am I going to put this up? I have no idea. I’m going to figure something out though. So I’m getting a nice shade on her face. This translucent is almost too thick. It’s killing too much of the highlight. I like to have that highlight on her face. Now let’s see if I can hold that with one hand and lean it against the pole so it’ll be out of the frame. So I may have Chanda help me hold this with one hand. Now she can get it up into place so I can get the nice light on her face. If I had to I could have her hold it with two hands. That’s a really easy way to get her in a position where I can let her hold that reflector against the pole and I can shoot just underneath it. I still see the building in the background and I get a beautiful light on her face. It works really nice. So she’s helping me out there. Another thing you can do if you’re trying to get her into the shade is you simply have her turn her back to the sun. She has beautiful dark hair, so it can handle that direct sunlight. Now she just simply holds the reflector to bounce some light back into her face. She can even lean in or move over this way into that reflector. Right there, I can pretty much kill the light on her hair if she looks away. There you go. Now the reflector is bouncing light back into on her face. That’s a little low for what I’d like, I’d rather have this up here like this to give me a little light from above. But all we have to do is turn her head away from the light, there you go, I can get a nice profile like that and we can bounce a little light back in on our face. And if I get it up high, it’s a beautiful light that’ll balance with our background. So there’s a quick tip on natural lighting. It’s about being resourceful. Always think you can find an option. And if you feel like you’re going to find an option, you do. I was with Kenneth one time and we were shooting at a house and I wanted to put a reflector in the window. I didn’t want to go get a stand and go through that whole process. I just grabbed the reflector and bent the corners in and shoved it into the window frame and we had it in the window. It gave us a great light in the bathroom. So look for ways to be resourceful. Make things happen with what you have in your surroundings. Your model can help you hand hold it. If you see a fence use it to help hold your refector. You can put it against the fence. There’s a lot of different ways to get your talent into some shade. Get your model into the shade. Some places will soften the light and let it be a half a stop darker. That’s okay, let that background be a little bit bright. So there’s a quick tip on how to get some nice images when the sun comes out. Make sure you Subscribe to The Slanted Lens and keep those cameras rollin’ and keep on clickin’.
