Another way you can go against
conventional wisdom is to shoot against the light this is called back lighting I've got a rim, a halo running across my shoulders through my hair and down the other side, it's called a rim light this is caused by back lighting and it's making it extra decorative i feel. Back lighting works particularly well
with translucent subjects such as a bottle of wine glass, due drops, ice things of that nature. It's also great with portraits now janey is shooting against the light with the video camera and that is why i have this rim light going on all around me. To explain the technique i'm going to talk you through a back lit portrait by doing one of Nat here.
As you can see the sun's coming from
right behind us it's really quite strong we've got the river we got some trees
off into the distance there, these are really really useful because when you're
back lighting a portrait it's often best to have your subject against something dark, if you have, if i have Nats head against the sky we'd probably lose that rim lighting effect, because the sky is really really bright. Now in order to get that isolation against the background i'm going to use a fairly long-ish lens because that will help me to isolate Tash, against whats going on behind her. When shooting into light you want to always make sure you've got a lens hood on, the lens hood acts like your hand over your eyes when you're looking into the sunlight yourself if you don't use a lens hood the chances are you'll have a milky
washed out picture or a little boom boom boom boom boom ringlets going across it. This is called lens flare it's great as a technique and it can look really smart but the purposes of what we're doing now let's just say you
don't want it, so use a lens hood.
So let's have a go shooting a picture of
tash that's it straighten your dress out. Excellent. Now just kind of look over into the trees Nat, can we just have a moody old looking into the distance. Turn your face a little to your right that's it plenty, i don't want to get too much light on the tip of your nose.
Now when you frame-up the shot, to make sure you've isolated your subject against the
background, suns gone down a bit but it's still plenty enough for back light for rim light. Just shoot the shot, chances are the camera will get confused
because there's loads of light going on behind your subject, that might upset it
and you'll need to overexpose to compensate. The background will get really bright but it means your subject will be the correct exposure. So i need to brighten up that last shot i did of Tash i can do that by dialing in a bit of exposure compensation, i'm going to go to plus one stop, that's going to make the picture twice as bright but the background will get brighter but tash will become the correct exposure.
Let's re-compose the shot, there we go, that's it Tash. Let your shoulders relax a bit, it's very good, we're getting good at this. There we go that's great, Tash is now at the correct exposure. Come on sun we want more of you.
Another way you could do it it would be
to press the auto exposure lock button on the the back of the camera, if you go up close to your subject fill the frame with her or him or it, according to what you're doing you press the auto exposure lock button like that, and as long as i hold my thumb on that button doesn't matter where i point the camera, it's going to keep that same exposure locked into the camera then all we have to do is re-compose your shot, and take the picture. Once again tash is perfectly exposed. Alternatively you could do it manually and that's much the same as the last technique, you just go up close fill the frame, read of the exposure on the camera's light meter this is a hundred and sixtieth of a second at F five point-six go to manual mode and set a hundred and sixtieth of a second at F five point six. Just like that.
Take the shot, job done, when you do that ignore the camera's light meter because it might say this is way over exposed, it isn't you've exposed for the subject not the background. That's really all there is to it. Back lighting can add a real dinamisum to your photography and i really recommend grab your camera on a sunny day, get yourself out there and have a go at this..
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