portraits with African American Models

I am not trying to be offensive in anyway with this post but I have a photo

shoot coming up soon with an African American girl and have a few questions

regarding wardrobe and exposure.

 

Does anyone have any advice?

I will be shooting with a Canon 30D and either a 70-200 F/2.8L or a 17-85mm F/4-5.6.

The shots will be outdoors. Not sure of the location yet but I was thinking

about having a lighter background with dull colors and having the model wear

something bright so that she jumps out of the background.

 

Please let me know what your suggestions would be.

thanks!

i am no expert at this but have taken a lot of casul pictures of friends with darker skin. opening up one stop had given me better results in the past. with very dark skin perhaps two stop.

Do you mean closing one stop?

 

If I auto-meter dark skin I get overexposure, since the meter will try to make the skin 18% grey. I need to tell teh meter to "underexpose" inorde rto get black skin showing as black. In fact I took a portrait of a black girl today and compensated by minus 2/3 stop. Looked great.

PS this girl was not American, and not African either, so I feel that all I can say is 'black'. Not trying to offend anyone of course.

There is this myth that you have to overexpose darker skin. All that seems to really do is ensure their eyes are blown out. The darkest human skin I've run across in 30 years is about as reflective as a new pair of bluejeans. Would you have any problem with a model dressed all in denim?

 

Think of it as the difference between shooting a bowl of citrus fruit and a bowl of dark red apples.

 

The same melanin that darkens skin also makes it less translucent, so it tends to reflect more. You're less likely to get those hard-to-correct overall color casts due to bright colors around the subject, but will get more areas of solid color. It can be a stunning addition or a big headache, but it's something to be aware of. Hard specular reflections can be a blessing or a curse, too, so watch for unexpected highlight blowouts.

Make sure you keep her hair from blending in with the background. Also those "Hard specular reflections" are tough to deal with outside without some open shade and constant makeup touch ups.