On Location help!!

[SabrinaO]

Outdoor photography is a whole another world to me, since im so used to studio lighting. I have an engagement session coming up and I just need some tips.
I know all about the golden hour and the session is gonna be taken late afternoon/evening. I have a sb600 and I know when to use the fill flash, but do you all normally bounce it, or just point it straight on? Where do you bounce it if you are in a wooded park? I have a reflector.. when should I use the reflector? Its just going to be me (i have no assistant) so i don't know how im gonna be able to work the cam and reflector.
What do you all do when you shoot on location?

 

[Aze]

This is a great question. I'm going to be doing some outdoor portraiture of my pregnant wife in the not too distant future and this would be some great info to have.

 

[andynrach]

Well, I can offer help with one thing: how to hold the reflector. Either bring your tripod or even a lightstand if you have to and some clamps. You can clamp your reflector onto that and use that to hold it/place it. Good luck. I can't wait to see the tips on this one!

 

[Big Mike]

I rarely bounce a flash when shooting outdoors. One of the biggest benefits of bouncing the flash indoors, is that you enlarge the size of the light source so dramatically, that the light gets very soft. Bouncing the flash off of a reflector will also soften it, but probably not as much as using a wall or ceiling...and really, it's just very hard to use a reflector if you don't have a VALS (voice activated light stand...aka: assistant).

If I am going to use a flash for outdoor portraits, it's either on-camera for fill, or it's shooting directly at the subjects from an off-camera location...either on a light stand or being held by a VALS. A flash by itself is a pretty hard light, so I'll use an umbrella or softbox to soften it.

A reflector is still a very useful tool, as long as I have the resources to use it. You can buy a stand with clips to hold a reflector...but those can be slow to set up just right, and they would likely blow over in the slightest breeze. You really need a person to hold them when using outdoors. Sometimes, the reflector is a good or better choice for fill light, than using flash. For example, when using flash, you are limited to the max sync speed of the camera (or you must use the high speed sync (Auto FP for Nikon) which allows you to shoot at faster shutter speeds, but limits your working distance). But when using a reflector for fill, you don't have that limitation.

I think that a bigger key to shooting portraits outdoors, is learning to recognize the naturally available lighting situations and knowing how to take advantage of them. For example, learn to identify the light sources for a scene/position. Obviously the sun can be a light source, but it's a very bright and hard light, so it's not ideal. If you turn your subjects away from the sun or put them behind an obstacle, then the open sky might be your main light source. It's much bigger than the sun (relative to the subjects) so it's a softer light. A good trick is to stand where your subjects will be and look back at the camera position...then you can really see all the things that will be your light sources.
Of course, a key to good portraiture is getting a nice ratio on your subject's face. You can do this outdoors by finding locations that are side lit. One of the best locations is under the cover of trees, but right at the edge of where the trees end. The open area is lightly going to provide a side light where the trees provide a darker area, thus you get a nice side lit scene.

Of course, it becomes very important to watch your background when shooting outdoors. It's very easy to pay too much attention to your subjects and not see that there is a branch behind them, that ends up looking like it's growing out of their head. Or maybe there is something non-natural, like power lines or something that ends up in the background when all you had to do, was take one step to the left, to get rid of it.

 

[gsgary]

You can use a tripod to rest the reflector against, shoot one handed reflector in the other or just angle it up and rest it aginst your legs or even get the subject to hold it infront of them, just use your imagination, i have place my flash on my monopod with a trigger and clamped it with my arm to get it higher