The so-called “Golden Hours” of light are an opportune time to shoot portraits, but all too often we are limited to shooting around others schedules or need to make use of a full day to complete the job or jobs.  There are times i will spend entire Saturdays shooting senior portraits.  From 9AM to 7PM, 5 seniors, 5 sessions.  5 times the business.  Lets forget for a moment it’s near impossible to rouse the average high school senior out of bed at 7am on a Saturday.  If i limited myself to the golden hours, i would have 1.5 hours in the morning and 1.5 hours in the evening.  I’m not really capitalizing on my schedule.   We shoot when we need to, not always when we want to.  Tips and tricks after…

The biggest problem with shooting through midday light isnt so much the angle of the sun or flat color value.  It’s the blinding brightness.  Film and digital sensors can only render so much range of color and light.  This is referred to as dynamic range or exposure latitude.  Ansel Adams used the famous zone system to establish his shooting exposures.  He separated the overall latitude of his images into multiple zones or tonal values so he could create a proper mid-tone and also know where the shadows and highlights would fall in his images.  Thus, he knew which portions of his image (if any) would be over or under exposed.

Our job in these more challenging lighting environments is to compress the range of information so that the camera can record as much color and detail as possible.  A very simple way to do this is use an additive source of light.  By controlling your exposure for the ambient value and adding in light for the foreground or subject you compress the overall latitude of the image into an obtainable range.  An additive light source doesn’t have to be a flash.  Reflectors are a very nice way to control lighting.  As with anything, there are pros and cons to using reflectors.  I typically shoot without assistance, which makes reflectors a nightmare to manage.  Also, to make use of a reflector, there must be sufficient light to reflect.  This pretty much rules out anything less than mostly sunny days.

i will typically use the sun as either a key (main) or separation light.  The added light source will be a fill light or a key light when the sun is striking the subject from behind as a separation.

This image is shot at approximately 3PM with the sun as a separation light high and to the back left of the subject.  The flash is from the front left.  I used a speedlight to light this and first tried to remote trigger the flash using CLS (remember CLS?) .  Shooting into the bright sun drowned out the flash pulse trigger and the remote flash did not fire.  I tried switching over to SU-4 mode on my SB unit which makes it a manually-controlled, optically-triggered slave unit.  This is a much more sensitive triggering system than CLS with TTL control as it is just a single strobe from the main flash to trigger the off camera speedlight.  Unfortunately it was intermittent at best.  I always keep a SC29 TTL cable in my flash bag for just such an occasion.  I was working in close proximity to my flash and subject so one TTL cable was all i needed, but you can usually connect up to three cables and maintain full capabilities of the entire system.   The TTL cable enables your flash to act exactly the same as when it is directly in the camera’s hot shoe.  The flash was set to TTL BL FP (Focal Plane sync, or high speed sync) which enabled auto flash exposure at higher than normal shutter sync speed (1/250th) and metering that balances the flash illuminated foreground subject with the ambient background light.  By using FP mode on my speedlight i was able to shoot at around 1/1000-1/2000th of a second and still have a fairly wide open aperture for controlled depth of field rendering.  The sky is still mostly overexposed and i had a few more stops i could have pushed the light to bring the blue sky back into the picture, but i would have started underexposing the trees in the background and lost the little bit of color i was seeing.  Also, the faster shutter speed you use in this mode the shorter the exposure distance of your flash.  Combine that with the diffuser dome and softbox which reduced my light output and heavily taxed the flash.  This results in slower recycling speed and going through AA’s batteries much faster.  When using larger light modifiers out in bright sunlight, i will put multiple speedlights in one light source to increase the capable power or decrease the recycling time.

equipment used:

RPS-4030 20″ softbox, Nikon SB-800 with the diffuser dome attached for more evenly distributed light inside the box, Fotorosa boom stand,  Nikon SC-29, Nikon D700, Nikon 50mm f/1.8.

This simple portrait was shot with a SU-800 triggering a speedlight in a large umbrella mounted on a boom stand.  I knew what distance i was shooting at so i controlled the flash in manual mode through CLS.  Working in the shade allows for extensive control of ambient light.  ISO200, f/2.0-2.8, and a shutter around 1/125th got me there.  Simple and effective.  The SU-800 controller works great indoors and in the shade, but transmits through IR light and is practically useless in bright sunlight.  I use booms quite a bit when putting lights up on location as they allow for a very precise placement of the light.  The Fotorosa boom comes with a sandbag and is very necessary for counter-weighting the boom.  I also use a couple of RPS Sand Bags for the legs of the stands in extra windy situations or when the flash and modifier go to heights greater than six feet.  I especially like the RPS bags for the visibility, but they are all black on the flipside which makes for a nicer appearance when shooting at all those black tie affairs.

The last image was shot around 4:30-5PM with the sun to the back left of the subjects.  You can see the sunlight working as a rim light to separate the subjects from the background.  It also filters beautifully through the leaves to bring out the fall colors.  Fill light is from one speedlight off to the camera’s right and triggered through CLS from a master flash on my camera.  I used a bare flash in this setup as the light was approximately 30 feet away from the subjects and a 20×20″ softbox would be almost negligible as a diffused source of light.  It would also rob my power output too much.  When working at this distance FP sync is not an option without using several speedlights to increase the overall power.  I shot this at ISO200, 1/250th, and f/9.0-f/11.0.  The speedlight was emitting 1/2 power in manual mode.  On a compositional note, i framed the image into thirds and the middle third where the subjects are placed is brighter than the top or bottom.  Autumn leaves are both colorful and pretty to look at, but i don’t want them to distract from the subject of the photograph.  When shooting on location, especially in nature, be very aware of your background.