I would love to see how this came out!

NancyMoranG · Sep 30, 2015

Don't leave us newb's hanging?? What is the solution, just a lot of lighting set up?
Or what would be the best option for his situation?
Sorry to interrupt the fun

jcdeboever · Sep 30, 2015

Hey, that's me! [emoji4]

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk

Braineack · Sep 30, 2015

use a flash. popup, or on-camera or off-camera; just needed a simple flash or reflector.

So there were two different scenarios here that flash would have helped; 1. standing in the sunlight and 2. standing in the shade.

If the photographer chose to keep the golfer in the sunlight the issue is going to be deep shadows on the face depending on where the sun is. Just needed a little bit of extra light to bring the eyes back out -- if you look at the shot @tirediron took, there's HEAVY shadow under people's hat brims, so the subject will have "raccoon eyes".

So the use of a reflector to bounce light back up onto the shaded area of the face, or a flash to "fill in" would even things out. Even if the assistant held a simple white sheet of printer paper just out of the frame under the chin of the subject, it would have helped here (it appears he's shooting a head shot portrait). otherwise, the pop-up flash could have been beneficial in cutting out harsh shadows.

I suspect the photographer wanted to use a wider aperture and even at his limit of 1/4000 or 1/8000 sec was having issues bringing the exposure down and why he moved the subject to the shade. Since the BG is so off in the distance here, there would have been no issue stopping down the lens and still maintaining a soft background.

Now into the shade. this actually isn't a bad idea here, but the problem is the photographer doesn't have any supplemental lighting. @tirediron mentioned that the shutter speed was very low when he listened to the shots here. There's because the photographer was exposing for the subject's face, and since he's now out of the light, he was having issues trying to get enough. Beyond that, this will suggest the background would look almost pure white because a long shutter here on an extremely bright afternoon doesnt make sense.

In this situation you really want to set your camera up for the background exposure. So what he needed to do was meter for the sky and set up his camera to exposure the sky perfectly (maybe a stop darker than "ideal"). Then he could have used popup flash in TTL mode to balance the subject with the background--bringing him back up to the same exposure level as the background. The image created here would have a good background exposure and a good subject exposure due to the extra lighting. A reflector could have been used here again as well to actually bounce the sun's lighting onto the photographer -- same idea.

So again, in one situation we are using flash/reflector to fill in shadows in the other we are using flash/reflector to provide the lighting on the subject to match the background.

Does that help clarify?

NancyMoranG · Sep 30, 2015

Yes, thank you!
Sometimes I see people trying to take a photo like this at a 'touristy' type location and have wished I could give some helpful advice...

Braineack · Sep 30, 2015

this video does a decent job explaining the in shade scenario:

you dont need that studio flash, a pop-up or on-camera flash could do the same.

ah here's a good one showing both scenarios:

JacaRanda · Sep 30, 2015

gsgary said:
If he was shooting with a Nikon it would be perfect

Classic

JacaRanda · Sep 30, 2015

NancyMoranG said:
Yes, thank you!
Sometimes I see people trying to take a photo like this at a 'touristy' type location and have wished I could give some helpful advice...

Did it this weekend as a couple asked if I could take a shot of them with their I-phone. Showed them the difference and they were very appreciative.