In my previous post “Portrait photography: finding the front light”, I showed one possible natural setting to make portraits of women shine.
In this blog post, I’m going to show another favorite portrait set up of mine. On a sunny day, it is best to avoid harsh shadows on the face of the model. One possible solution is to find a shaded area, like the location shown in the “finding the front light” blog post. But it is also possible to place the sun behind the model. The light doesn’t hit the model’s face directly and one gets a beautiful rim light around the head to nicely separate the subject from the background. An example is shown below, with the low setting sun on Holyrood Park, Edinburgh, behind Maria.
With the sun behind the model and facing the photographer, the bright light can enter the lens directly and cause what is called lens flare. In the above image, I kept the direct sunlight from hitting the front of the lens. It is generally recommended to do this, but sometimes, breaking the rules can give interesting results. In the picture below, I didn’t prevent the direct sunlight from entering the lens and the resulting flare gives the image an ethereal quality.
Share this content on
by 
