I need help with outdoor lighting...

[astri]

Hi! I'm an amateur photographer and will be taking some black and whites at my friends' wedding. It will be outdoors, just before sunset, and I'll only be using ambient light (no flash, no artificial light).

My question is this: how can I get a cool photo of the sun behind the couple, framing them, and still see their faces? It seems like every time I experiment with this I end up with a black sillouette in front of the sun.

Can anyone help me?

Thanks so much,
Astri

 

[voodoocat]

You will need to use fill flash.
Otherwise you could use reflectors.

 

[Chase]

Without the use of flash or artificial light, my only suggestion would be to use reflectors of some sort. Depending on the level of light, there is a good chance you may still not get enough light on the couple.

Also, be careful about metering. You want to make sure you are metering the exposure for the couple and not for the sunset.

Hope I've helped a little, although I know there are a lot more members on here that will be much more help than I have been.

Chase

 

[ksmattfish]

Anytime you include a gigantic ball of thermo-nucular ("I'm not a scientist, I'm the president...") gas in your composition, you're asking for trouble.

You are almost invariably going to have to use flash. Subject to flash distance will determine aperture; meter the sky away from the sun to find the shutter speed.

It seems to me that there isn't enough light at sunset to use with reflectors. So you'd need another source of light to reflect.