Photographing mixed race family

[kitkatdubs]

I am photographing a family friend that is a mixed race family - mom is caucasian, dad is african american. I have been reading that this can be tough to do b/c of exposure. Is there any tips some pros can offer to help me with this? I am slightly nervous. I really don't want to overexpose the mom b/c I am trying to get the dad right. Does that make sense? Any advice is helpful, thanks!

 

[unpopular]

At most you're looking at a 3, maybe 4 stop difference, which would be very extreme but still within latitude. I have no idea where you would have read such a crazy thing.

If you're really worried about it, use a grey card or incident meter. Everything will fall into place.

 

[Watchful]

As long as they are all people, photograph them as people. Some cameras have a portrait setting, none have a black/white switch with it.

 

[table1349]

As long as they are all people, photograph them as people. Some cameras have a portrait setting, none have a black/white switch with it.

OP, this is a good article dealing with the subject. How to Photograph Various Skin Tones

Hope it helps.

 

[Watchful]

Lol monochrome isn't to select black person or white person, its to drop saturation of color to 0.

 

[tirediron]

In general, I light for the darkest skin and keep it nearest the key light.

 

[Didereaux]

Couple of ways come to my mind. One, the easy but less satisfying is overexpose a stop or two and then selectively dodge for proper exposure in post. the other correct way is by modifying your light to correct the picture. Maybe two lights one barndoored to correct his darker skin or some variant of that. There is actually quite a number of images, and explanations on this subject to be looked at. Do a GOOGLE image search on mixed couples. Then study carefully where the lighting accents are that will give you the photographers placements. Then it is a matter of balancing the lights which should take no more than 2, maybe three tries. Just my thoughts on the matter though. Don't forget that a REFLECTOR counts s a light source!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[chuasam]

Have them stand really really still and do 3 shot bracket *LOL*

 

[mcap1972]

I would expose properly for the light skin tone first and then recover darker skin tone in post.

 

[The_Traveler]

Have them stand really really still and do 3 shot bracket *LOL*

I don't know why the LOL.
This is a decent idea and I've done it once.
Any modern dslr shoots several frames/sec.

 

[chuasam]

Quite often, dark skinned subjects are horribly offended if you lighten their skin tone. Hence the LOL.

 

[The_Traveler]

I wasn't suggesting that they bleach anyone but you wouldn't have to raise shadows and get noise.
Still hurting in my memory is when I took pictures for a local AME church choir in their white satin robes; lots of effort to make everything look good - and I wished then I had bracketed to get teh dark skin better exposed.

 

[dennybeall]

The hardest part is looking carefully at all the people in the shot and after post processing be sure they are still the same relationship.
I've caught myself on a couple of occasions lightening a dark complexion in post processing to bring out detail and then realizing that person was in fact that dark.