{"id":63,"date":"2013-05-07T17:58:23","date_gmt":"2013-05-07T17:58:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/?p=63"},"modified":"2013-07-12T14:24:50","modified_gmt":"2013-07-12T14:24:50","slug":"portrait-photography-finding-the-back-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/portrait-photography-finding-the-back-light\/","title":{"rendered":"Portrait photography: finding the back light"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In my previous post &#8220;Portrait photography: finding the front light&#8221;, I showed one possible natural setting to make portraits of women shine.<br \/>\nIn this blog post, I&#8217;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 &#8220;finding the front light&#8221; blog post. But it is also possible to place the sun behind the model. The light doesn&#8217;t hit the model&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_64\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-64\" style=\"width: 531px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Portrait-Back-Light.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-64\" alt=\"Portrait of model with back light\" src=\"http:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Portrait-Back-Light.jpg\" width=\"531\" height=\"800\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-64\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The setting sun behind the model, Maria, gives an even and soft light on her and a rim light most noticeable on the left side of the picture<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>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&#8217;t prevent the direct sunlight from entering the lens and the resulting flare gives the image an ethereal quality.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_65\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-65\" style=\"width: 531px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Portrait-back-Light-Lens-Flare.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65\" alt=\"Model portrait with back light and lens flare\" src=\"http:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Portrait-back-Light-Lens-Flare.jpg\" width=\"531\" height=\"800\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-65\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The direct sun light entering the lens gives a low contrast image with an ethereal mood<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my previous post &#8220;Portrait photography: finding the front light&#8221;, I showed one possible natural setting to make portraits of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,28,43,19],"tags":[22,29,7,21],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lighting","category-modelling","category-photography-2","category-portrait","tag-lighting-2","tag-model","tag-photography","tag-portrait-2","missing-thumbnail"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"PhilsBlog","author_link":"https:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/author\/philsblog\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1451,"href":"https:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions\/1451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}