shade. The ability to control outdoor lighting is really
what separates the good children’s photographers from
the great ones. Learning to control, predict, and alter
daylight to suit the needs of the portrait will help you cre-
ate elegant natural-light portraits consistently.
Just as in the studio, it is important that outdoor im-
ages appear to be lit by a single light. This is a fundamen-
tal in portraiture. Unlike the studio, where you can set
the lights to obtain any effect you want, in nature you
must use the light that you find.Common Problems.
One thing you must be aware of outdoors is separating
the subject from the background. Dark hair against a dark
green forest background will create a tonal merger.
Adding a controlled amount of flash fill or increasing the
background exposure will solve the problem.
Sometimes, you may choose a beautiful location for a
portrait, but find that the background is totally unwork-
able because of a bald sky, a cluttered look, or mottled
patches of sunlight. The best way to handle such back-
grounds may be later in post-production. Any number of
softening, vignetting, diffusion, or grain effects can be
added to the background alone to solve the problem.
You may also encounter excess cool coloration in por-
traits taken in shade. If your subject is near a grove of36 CHILDREN’S PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY HANDBOOK
Y
oungsters are often more at ease in natural surroundings than
they are in the confines of a studio. Fortunately, outdoor light-
ing offers countless lighting possibilities. You can photograph chil-
dren in backlit, sidelit, or frontlit situations; in bright sun or deep
4. OUTDOOR AND NATURAL LIGHTING.
Elizabeth Homan capitalized on some beautiful “found” light-
ing—late afternoon sun rim lighting the trellis and young girl, and
a bright house close by reflecting direct sun back onto the scene.
Elizabeth enhanced the portrait by softening the background and
painting in details into the flowers in the arbor and greenery.