Working with Direct Sunlight
When forced to photograph in bright sunlight, begin by turning your subjects so the direct sunlight is backlighting or rim lighting them. This negates the harshness of the light and prevents your subjects from squinting. Then, fill in the backlight with strobe or reflectors (being careful to avoid underexposure). It is best to add 1/3 to 1/2 stop exposure in backlit situations portraits in order to “open up” the skin tones.
Images made in bright sunlight are unusually contrasty. To lessen that contrast, try using telephoto lenses or zooms, which have less inherent contrast than shorter, prime lenses. If shooting digitally, you can adjust your contrast preset to a low setting or shoot in RAW mode, where you can fully control image contrast post capture.
If the sun is low in the sky, you can use cross lighting to get good modeling on your subject. You must be careful, however, to position the subject so that the sun’s side lighting does not hollow out their eye socket on the highlight side. Subtle repositioning will usually correct this. You’ll also need to use fill light on the shadow side to preserve detail. Try to keep your fill flash output about 1/2 to one stop less than your daylight exposure. Watch the Room Light Many hotels use coiled fluorescent bulbs instead of tungsten-filament bulbs in the room lamps. Be on the lookout for them, because these fluorescents will not have the same warming quality as tungsten bulbs and could turn things a bit green. You may have to change your white balance, or use an auto or custom white balance setting, in these situations.
Take Advantage of Window Light
One of the most flattering types of lighting you can use is window lighting. It is soft, minimizes facial imperfections, yet provides a directional source for good facial modeling with low to moderate contrast. Window light is usually a fairly bright light and it is infinitely variable, changing almost by the minute. This allows a great variety of moods, depending on how far you position your subject from the light.
Since daylight falls off rapidly once it enters a window, and is much weaker several feet from the window than it is closer to the window, great care must be taken in determining exposure (particularly when creating group portraits, for which you will usually need to use reflectors to balance the overall light).
The best quality of window light is found mid morning or mid afternoon. Direct sunlight is difficult to work with because of its intensity and the fact that it will often create shadows of the individual windowpanes on the subject. However, you can diffuse overly contrasty window light by taping some acetate diffusion material to the window frame. Light diffused in this manner has the warm feeling of sunlight but without the harsh shadows. (Note: If the light is still too harsh, try doubling the thickness of the acetate for more diffusion.) With the light scattered in this way, you may not even need a fill source unless you are working with a larger group. If that is the case, use reflectors to kick light back into the faces of those farthest
from the window.
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