Backlighting a Subject

There are a million other places online where you can learn about backlighting (back-lighting?), and most are better resources. You may want to close this tab right now and Google it! For those of you still with me, I thought I'd throw out a few samples and tips when it comes to this type of lighting situation, because it's currently my fav. This post will be about natural, outdoor lighting--I know practically nothing about studio lighting.

Mostly what prompted this post is that I've been questioned a few times recently when I am posing people with their back to the sun. It's understandable. I, too, grew up often looking into the sun with squinting, watering eyes when people took my picture. I think it's a common idea that we need to face people toward the sun to get enough light. I've certainly used that method myself. Exhibit A:

Sorry, L, that couldn't have been comfortable! Notice she is squinting, and there are shadows under her chin and nose. The background is very dark because the camera had to expose down for her bright skin.

And sometimes the sun just isn't cooperating. I might want a certain background (and I know, I know: light trumps background) and am unwilling to give up on it, so I do what I can and get something like this. It's not the worst, and maybe you are wanting this lighting scenario sometimes. Uneven light can create a certain mood and highlight or downplay aspects of your photo for a look that really works. It's just different, and not my current preference most of the time. There are many ways to light a subject, and a lot of what you see out there now is about trend, not what is more correct.

Backlighting is trendy, but it also makes a lot of sense in certain situations. Here's what I love about it:

It gives a nice glowy edge to your subject, aka rim lighting. It's pretty, and it helps set your subject apart from the background.

You can achieve some cool effects with flare and general sun-shininess.

It more evenly lights the subject. It's softer with fewer shadows, which is often much more flattering for the person's skin. It does a little bit of natural erasing of fine lines and uneven texture. Liane has great skin, so this isn't a very dramatic example, but I thought I'd show a comparison of sidelighting to backlighting. This was another case where on the left I couldn't turn her back to the sun because we were on a hill with flowers that I wanted to incorporate. I worked with it even though it wasn't my favorite setup. I much prefer how the lighting looks on the right. It creates a happy glow around her, while her face is even and soft. (I wrote those little labels inconsistently, I now realize, but I don't feel like fixing it.)

You can also see that in the photo on the left, her hair and the background don't have much separation in the darker spots. If I had her against a more solidly dark background, she would sort of blend in so that you would barely know where her hair ended and the background began. On the right you have a definite outline to help her pop out from the background.

It often makes the background look a little dreamier as it fades into sunshine. This depends a lot on the time of day and the background, but it's a much softer backdrop than if you are shooting from a different direction.

Backlighting a subject does take a bit of practice. You have to get to know the right circumstances that will give you the look you're after. Here are a few tips in the form of a diagram I made:

Click on that diagram for a large version you can actually read. I'll re-note a couple of the things it says:

1. Look for a background that helps filter the sunshine for a pleasing look. If you just have sky behind the person, it'll be very washed out (assuming you are exposing for the face, not the background). Sometimes that's okay! But just know that in case that's not the look you're after.

Here you can see how the sky is very flat and white.

And here's how a building can help filter the light if the sun is positioned correctly. In this photo I took for work, the sun is still high enough that it wraps over the building and still brightens up the edges of everyone, yet the background is not completely washed out.

If your background doesn't allow any light to filter through or around it, you're basically just photographing your subject in the shade. That is also fine, but it means you probably won't get the rim lighting or glowy feel.

2. Make sure you are in manual mode on your camera so you can control the exposure. If you just let your camera handle it, it's going compensate for the brightness of the sun in the background and give you an underexposed photo. You need to force it to let in more light so the faces of your subjects are nice and bright. This is also what washes out the background to give it a more dreamy appearance.

3. It really helps when there is a pale scene/surface behind you to reflect a bit of light back to your subject. It means the background will be less washed out to include a bit more detail. Honestly, this is not always something I seek out, but you'll start noticing spots that work better because of the reflective surfaces. Some are even overly reflective, and you can still have squinting even when the person's back is to the sun. It's all a balance that just takes experience. I certainly need more experience! Meanwhile, it's really fun to discover awesomely-lit locations to place a subject. Sometimes you get lucky and it's easy, other times you have to keep moving to find a better spot. You can start practicing by simply asking your subject to turn their back to the sun, and start taking some pictures. You'll begin to see what works and what doesn't.

I hope this is helpful! Let me know if you have questions about this or something else I might be able to post about!

Photo experiments with K

My last set of pictures from K's visit are the ones we took when trying different photography subjects. K had requested we do the oil and water thing that I did awhile back, and then I added some other things that I wanted to try or retry. It was super nice to have help from someone also interested in photography!

As I'm sure you've gathered, we played around with a black light on a few occasions. It was fun to see what showed up and how, like my shoes (proving that, no, I don't untie them before I take them off...I'm such a grownup).


Then we did a bit of light painting, which I talked about another time (in this post).

Only, instead of flashlights with colored cloth, we used glow sticks, which I felt was much easier (even if you can't turn them off to create spaces in the design).

K got really good at making butterfly wings, and sometimes I could capture a little of her in the picture.

She also did a better tornado than mine (not pictured; it was lame).

But how cool is my flower? It was so fun to be able to take turns trying designs--way more fun than doing this alone!

I can't remember what I was going for with this, but it ended up looking kind of like an open book.

The left is a stick that had three sections of color. The right was when I experimented with tossing the glow sticks so they created a waterfall effect.

The whole experiment was pretty entertaining and hilarious!

Next, we worked on the oil and water pictures. I was able to try some more fabric for background colors.

Unfortunately, I had lost my ring flash when we were doing these. I even texted my parents wondering if I had left it there in April. Embarrassingly, I found it later in a laundry basket (with clean laundry over it--I can never seem to keep up with folding my laundry!!). I'm glad it wasn't really lost, but bummed we weren't able to use it. We did use my other flash and a flashlight, though.

Most of these are K's photos.

The oil and water was bubbling a lot more than last time, maybe due to a change in the type of oil I had on hand. But the bubbles are cool too.

Then this was something I've been wanting to try for a long time--dropping colored water into clear water. We had been watercoloring a couple of nights before and noticed the cool patterns when we dipped the brush in the clean water. I think people use lots of different things for this type of image, but the right consistency of watercolor worked great. Since it was my first time trying, though, we had issues with lighting, the container used (and needing to constantly replace the water), getting the right consistency of paint and just catching the right moment when the drop was looking awesome. It was a lot harder than I thought and I'd like to work on it some more later.

Lots of people have said these look like jellyfish, and I agree. This one has a cyan background due to my photo editing. When I did an auto adjustment of Curves (in Photoshop), it changed the white-gray background to be this aqua color, and K told me to keep it, so I obeyed!

Finally (this has gotten longer than I thought!), K patiently let me try out a concept I had seen on Pinterest at one point. I have tried these light shapes in the past, but hadn't incorporated them into a portrait before. I loooooooved how these looked with the ghostly image of K in the back with the light shapes posed in different ways. She's just holding a string of Christmas lights, but she had some good ideas for how to hold them.

I was having a hard time getting the hearts to show up right, though.

I had much better luck when I switched to the butterfly cut out.

It was hard to narrow these down.

I think having the butterfly "hair" made it seem all fairy-like. This was really fun.

Okay! Thanks so much for looking at my posts/pictures of my time with K. :) Enjoy your week!

Photography: Light Painting

A friend reminded me about this technique that I'd read about but never tried. Too often I put off fun experiments with lame excuses, so the other night I just went for it based on my memory of reading an article about it several months ago. My results aren't fabulous, but you get the idea. Below are instructions on how you can do something similar (and likely much better).



SETUP

1. Grab a flashlight. I tried it with a keychain version and a large Maglite, because those are the only flashlights I have.

2. Set up your camera with remote on a tripod or shelf of some sort. Or if you're like me, a bistro chair topped with a concordance, parallel Bible, and a Harry and David box.

3. You can do this trick without a remote if you set your camera to 30-second exposures on a timer and keep your "paintings" in that time slot (pretty easy to do). In fact, it might even work better to not bother with the remote.

4. Your camera's aperture and ISO settings need to be ones that don't allow much light in. I put mine on f/16 with 100 ISO.

5. My shutter speed was set to BULB for the remote, but without a remote you can put it on whatever's slowest (likely 30 seconds).

6. Clear a space and make it very dark. After the obvious steps, like waiting until night time, closing all blinds from outdoor lighting and turning off all lights in my home, I draped a blanket over my TV and electronics so their little lights wouldn't interfere with my artistic magic.

7. Put your camera on the timer setting. (On my camera it did this automatically on the Remote setting.)



LIGHT PAINTING
(Not to be confused with painting light, which is Thomas Kinkade's job.)

So here's how I did it with my wired remote. I walked over with the flashlight on and flipped the remote into the locked position to keep the shutter open indefinitely. Because of the timer setting, it didn't open the shutter for a few seconds, so I quickly walked back into place and turned out my flashlight. After I heard the shutter open, I proceeded to turn on my flashlight, aim it at the camera, and draw whatever I wanted. Then I turned out the flashlight when I was done, walked over and switched the remote to close the shutter.


It's harder than I thought it would be. Apparently I'm not much on air-drawing. I kept moving the flashlight too high, so you can see my pictures are cut off.


Clearly I'm very spiritual. (Well, maybe not so clearly--that says "God," but all messily and cut off.)

NOTES

If you write something, it will turn out backwards in the resulting photo, so you can just reverse it in a photo editing program. Or you can try to write backwards, if you're that talented.


I found the key chain light gave a nice, fine line, but it was almost too fine. Also, I obviously tried writing my name a few times, but it wasn't turning out all that nicely.


I remembered someone mentioning a way to color the light by putting a cloth over it. The large Maglite was bright enough that it needed to be toned down anyway, so I first used a green washcloth and held it over the light. Later I tried a multi-colored sock, which was a better idea. It stayed on the flashlight better, and created more interesting colors. Notice there's both purple and green on some of these.


(I started blanking on words to try.)

Also--and I don't know if this made a difference--I dressed in dark clothing while I did this. I didn't want to show up in the pictures, and figured the fewer reflective surfaces, the better. My face wasn't covered, though, and you can't see any indication of me, so that's why I don't know if it mattered.

So...does that make sense? Feel free to ask questions in the comments. :) No guarantee I can be any clearer, though. There are other tutorials out there that do a better job, I'm sure. Google them.


This is a sad-looking heart. Wow.