Outdoor Shoot - Reflector or Fill Flash

[michaeldaggett]

<p>I have attached an image that shows how most of my outdoor shots come out. Don't mind the obvious dead grass and other issues, i'm mainly trying to figure out the shadows on her face and the dark part on her back side. Would I have been better off using a fill flash to light these areas, or a reflector? I don't think one reflector would be able to fill both areas. The sun was behind me but once I figure out how to attack this area, I'll move to the other issues.</p><div></div>

[tom_mann1]

<p>If you are a good location to do this, consider having the sun in back of the subject and then lighting her front-side with a couple of big foldable reflectors that are directly intercepting the sun's rays. </p>

<p>Unfortunately, I'm not at my Photoshop / archives computer so I can't pull out an illustration at the moment, but the technique works quite well. The sun acts like a hair / rim light, one reflector can serve as your key, and the other as your fill. I'm sure many other folks will chime in with examples of this.</p>

<p>I don't like using the sun as a backlight and then lighting her face with an on-camera flash. This technique has all the grace of a typical Point and Shoot flash shot except that the sun accidentally happened to be behind the subject.</p>

<p>Using the sun as a backlight and then lighting her face with a couple of off-camera flashes certainly works, but you really should diffuse these flashes, otherwise they will cast harsh shadows and not wrap around the subject's features. Diffusing your flashes chews up photons, and unless you are using big portable flashes, you will likely have problems getting enough light from small shoe-mount units. Don't forget that the size of the diffuser (softbox or umbrella) needs to be quite large, especially if you are doing full-length and/or group shots.</p>

<p>In addition, you always should gel your flashes to match the ambient light, and this is just one more thing to get wrong. This is one reason I generally prefer the simple 2 reflector approach. However, don't get fixated on this. If you happen to be stuck in a location or orientation where you don't have sunlight hitting your reflectors, you'll probably want to use a couple of diffused, off-camera flashes. The are very active websites that deal specifically with such techniques, e.g., strobist.com</p>

<p>HTH,</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

[studio460]

<p><strong><em>Reflectors:</em></strong></p>

<p>Either foldable or panel+frame silver reflectors (Photoflex, Lastolite, Westcott, California Sunbounce, etc.), 4' x 8' sheets of white Foamcore (placed close to subject), or my favorite, a 42" x 42" Matthews Mathflector, does the trick quite nicely.</p>

[frank_skomial]

<p>Use both, skillfully.</p>

<p>... like the photographer in the first picture, link below, uses huge reflector and fill flash.</p>

<p><a href="../no-words-forum/00Z9Xm?unified_p=1">http://www.photo.net/no-words-forum/00Z9Xm?unified_p=1</a></p>

[rob_piontek]

<p>The best thing you can do to start is get out of direct sun! Sure you can work with it, but it's way easier to simply avoid it and look for better light. The better the light is to start with, the easier it is, and the more options you have, to get it where you want it.</p>

[michaeldaggett]

And all this time I thought direct sun was my friend! Thanks for the time it took each of you to read and reply. I

appreciate your comments and will incorporate them into my shots!

[patricklavoie]

<p>most of the time, whe use a reflector, well place it can do the job more than just right.. it could be all you need.</p>

<p>Different size, color play a huge role also. I have a huge 6feet one with white and silver.. the silver help when the sun are not that present, but can kill your subject like in your example you post.. the sun would have been too strong for the silver side.</p>

<p>Of course you can do all this with a flash.. but why take the time to set up, make a reading, srtop, place the flash, make a reading etc... when a simple bounce could do. Of course, if you are alone, you will need a tripod to hold it.. but it is faster to play with a bounce to find what you need vs a flash in those condition.</p>

<p>A big white bed sheet on the floor can also do miracle of lighting your subject.. always depend of the sun out there.. but under a tree for example its a good idea because it kill some of the green from the grass, and open the shadow without blowing everything.</p>

<p>A friend of mine years a go was shoothing in a botanical garden a fashion shoot.. the sun was strong but not enough light where covering the subject.. he pull out a dozen white bed sheet, put them all around the subject on tree, wall etc.. it was like shoothing in a softbox!.. work amazingly well ; )</p>

<p>When you shoot outside you want to stay away of direct sunlight as it give harsh shadow (well depend of your image mood and what you want) many time whe use a big silkscreen liek a 12x12 over the head of the model so the sun become a huge softbox.. it help alot.. look at highend swimsuit photo for example..</p>

<p>a lot of bla bla bla.. in the end, use a reflector ; )</p>

[rob_piontek]

<p>My feeling is that reflectors are not a good option when the subject is backlit by strong sun. The problem is that the light required to balance is essentially the same as the sun, and your subject won't be able to look at you. So in this case flash is better, but now you have problems with your max sync speed or flash power. If you do get the balance right it feels a bit unnatural as your brain knows where the sun is. What can work well is to have your subject in open shade, and bounce sunlight in to use as your main light. </p>

[studio460]

<p>Tom said:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>. . . but the technique works quite well. The sun acts like a hair / rim light, one reflector can serve as your key, and the other as your fill.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes, I agree. I use this technique quite often in lighting for television.</p>

<p>Rob said:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>The best thing you can do to start is get out of direct sun!</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I agree that this technique eliminates the "problem" (i.e., it effectively lowers your scene's brightness ratio), but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's "best." You lose a lot of contrast and "snap" when shooting in open shade.</p>

[studio460]

<p>Patrick said:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>. . . use a big silkscreen liek a 12x12 over the head of the model so the sun become a huge softbox.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>While a 12' x 12' polysilk will certainly do the trick, it takes quite a bit of rigging and ballast to set up a silk that large. A Matthews 4' x 4' silk or 6' x 6' silk on a frame can often give you enough coverage for a single subject when the sun is lower in the sky.</p>

<p>Again, Photoflex, Lastolite, Westcott, and California Sunbounce all make excellent portable light-control systems, including large portable silks (a.k.a. "diffusers"):</p>

<p>Photoflex makes a very inexpensive, lightweight, plastic-framed series of diffusers which mimic the transmission and diffusion of a polysilk (I own several of these). Lastolite makes a very cool, foldable diffuser with a built-in handle that I'm also planning to get. Westcott ScrimJims are excellent--we use the 6' x 6' aluminum-frame versions of these at work; however, they require at least two steel C-stands, and at minimum, three 15 lb. sandbags on each. California Sunbounce products are likely the slickest location light-control tools available, but very pricey.</p>

[rob_piontek]

<p>Best was maybe not the right word! I guess I would just say that I find it difficult to get something I'm happy with when I try something in the sun. Maybe it's me that's the problem! I agree about the snap, too, in shade. But you can get this back without too much trouble by adding a light source. Here is a shade shot with 1 umbrella....<br>

<img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/13780692-lg.jpg" alt="" width="720" height="580" /><br>

One thing I did try once that worked really well (in the sun) was to block the sun with my shoot-through umbrella, as the main. But I still used flash in the same umbrella, basically bringing the exposure back up to what the bare sun would give. The advantage was my 'sun' was now bigger, and my subjects weren't squinting. Only will work if the sun is not too high, though. Learned this trick from a smart person in this forum!<br>

To me the challenge with lighting is learning to understand what the problems are, what you want it to look like, and then how to get it. </p>

[michaeldaggett]

Thanks again for the help! I'm off to B+H to place an order....

[studio460]

<p>Rob said:</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>Best was maybe not the right word!</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Well, it certainly isn't the worst either, as your example shows. Just another way to go. Nice shot!</p>

[patricklavoie]

<p>@Ralph... yeah youre right.. im so use of using those big setup thing that i find them *normal*.. but a 12x12 is a serious pain to setup so it can stay up when the wind is up ; )</p>

<p>whe have to drill the rock in the Nevada desert so whe can put geant spike to maintain the whole thing once.. not something i would like to repeat!</p>

<p> </p>

[studio460]

<p>Mike said:</p>

 

 

<blockquote>

<p>Thanks again for the help! I'm off to B+H to place an order....</p>

</blockquote>

<p>What did you decide on getting?</p>

 

[michaeldaggett]

<p>You guys are awesome! I decided to go to my local Camera Store to get a 41 in silver/white reflector. I saw an add on CL for a family looking for a cheap photographer, so I contacted them. This was my first every photo shoot that wasn't my daughter or wife. My wife held the reflector and I think it worked wonderfully! Check it out!</p><div></div>

[tom_mann1]

<p>Great job, Michael. If you really want to tweak it to perfection, I noticed that the bokeh of the lens that you used is a bit busy, ie, halos with a hollow center, but that is easily fixed using the lens blur filter in PS. While doing that I also decreased the brightness of the background a bit.</p>

<p>Again, great job! Congrats.</p>

<p>Tom M</p><div></div>

[michaeldaggett]

Lens blur filter eh... Im going to have to check it out - I love what you've done to this! Thanks for your continued

assistance and knowledge!

[tom_mann1]

<p>You remember the old Japanese / Chinese / Italian / whatever curse, <em>"Be careful what you wish for ... you might get it"</em>, well, you asked for a tiny bit of advice and now you got me on your case. ;-)</p>

<p>Anyway, we are getting down to the area of personal preference and nit picking, but upon further reflection I think you could have used a bit more light, a bit more contrast, and a bit more warmth on the faces, say, with a warmer fill reflector. I attempted to simulate that in the attached.</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>Tom M</p><div></div>

[michaeldaggett]

Wow Tom - I'm reading this from my iPhone as I try to fall asleep - so forgive the brevity - but damn, I like your

second version even better! You say nit picking, I say artistic flair and that's where I want to improve. I appreciate the

time it took you to make the changes, I'll try to duplicate them later this week and see how I do!

[studio460]

<p>Great job, Michael! See? Reflectors can work wonders . . . as long as it's not cloudy!</p>

[tom_mann1]

<p>OK, I promise this will be my last tweak ;-)</p>

<p>I thought the skin colors (especially, the woman) were a bit too saturated and uneven, the eyes of the parents could use some extra brightening, and a touch of old-fashioned diffusion would help matters. OTOH, the diffusion spilled onto the kids faces and maybe brightened them up a bit too much, but it's soft of a hi-key effect, so it's a judgement call. Anyway, it's lotsa fun to play with such a nice starting image -- there are just endless possibilities.</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

<p>PS - BTW, I forgot to mention it earlier, but it would be nice if the top of dad's head didn't touch the edge of the frame. I'm not sure if that's due to initial framing or after-the-fact cropping.</p><div></div>

[michaeldaggett]

Wow Tom, it keeps getting better! The original raw image is nothing like this one! Very cool! I'm going to re-read

through your posts and attempt what you did here, I like your image a lot better! I loved mine, until insaw yours :)

 

Half of the battle with photography is being able to see the end result. Before I couldnt see past my image and you've

opened up my eyes to this - I can not thank you enough! As I re-work the image, I'll post updates, and I'm sure I'll be

asking you lots of, how did you do that questions! Any Chance you live in Indianapolis?? :)

[tom_mann1]

<p>Hi Michael -</p>

<p>I certainly agree with you that a very important part of photography is to be able to visualize an end result that appeals to you. However, it's very easy to visualize huge numbers of possible final images that might look cool, but which are impossible to achieve from the starting image because of either physical / technical limitations or limited skill. So, it's essential to develop the ability to know what you can get out of a given image, and this only comes with experience processing thousands of images. It sounds like you are starting down exactly this (really fun) path.</p>

<p>One way to approach the above goal is not to think in such general terms, but rather, to develop one's ability to determine *exactly* what you don't like about a given image (aka, "what's wrong with it"), and then iteratively work your way from the most serious "errors" down to the level of very minor tweaks. This is exactly what I did in the case of your image, and for the purpose of teaching, I think it's almost essential to save and post the intermediate steps in the process. </p>

<p>Another advantage of keeping / posting the intermediate steps is that, at least for me, I often go too far in processing an image, but will only realize this after I have "slept on" the latest version for a while. When this happens, I usually just blend back in the good parts of an earlier version(s) that I like. For example, this is exactly what happened to me with this image. After looking at my tweak #3 for a while, I'm very happy with the improvements to the woman in tweak #3, so-so on the kids, and not at all happy how the man came out in tweak #3. IMHO, I evened out the lighting on him way too much, and he now looks two dimensional and not very manly to me. So, to improve this, using a mask, I would probably just blend in 60 or 70% of the man in tweak #2 to tweak #3 to get the best parts of both tweak #2 and tweak #3.</p>

<p>I live in the Washington, DC 'burbs, but I would be delighted to see how you process the image, and if you would like, we could do this by email instead of in the forums. Just drop me an email and I'll respond with my real email address.</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

[michaeldaggett]

<p>Tom,<br>

I spent some time this evening working and reworking the image. I was able to duplicate the lens blur to the back ground and even bringing the brightness to the desired results. I'm sure there are numerous ways to accomplish this, but essentially what I did was flatten the layers I had previously, created a new layer, made the necessary adjustments to the entire image then erased the parts of the layer that I did not want affected by the lens blur. It is tedious work to get precise at that point. Is that basically the same way you went about the first step? What I've come to know about photoshop is that there are usually multiple ways to get the end result, but I've often gone about it a longer way than most as I'm learning on my own through experimentation.<br>

As for the tweeks you made to end up with Image 2, I can not duplicate those, when I try to add light, or decrease the redness in the woman's face it turns out worse. The diffuse glow didn't work as well. <br>

Although I knew this to be true, I had no idea how much work can be done in the post processing. and how the smallest tweeks make the biggest differences. </p>

<p> </p><div></div>