“This weekend I am going to a park with little to no shade to take pics…I am going at 11 AM”. Ever find yourself in this position? A friend of mine found herself in this situation and asked for some advice.

First reaction of any photographer would be, ‘DON’T do it!’ But if you have to shoot in these settings, let’s look at how we can make the most of it.

Now fortunately 11 AM in November is a lot different than 11 AM in July. The sun this time of year is lower in the sky and not as intense as in July. The first thing when photographing people outdoors is finding soft flattering light. Soft light reduces contrast. The lower your contrast the less of a difference between white and black. Contrast creates hard edges. So knowing this, soft light is most flattering for people, because it helps reduce the appearance of blemishes and makes the skin appear clean and smooth.

How do you find soft light at 11 AM? (1) Ideally you need to find open shade. The image below was shot on a senior shoot, where the sun was still a little hard, but we found this stairwell with amazing light. The top and bottom images are the same, just one is cropped. You can see the bright sunshine pouring in from camera left, this was aided by the concrete floor acting as a beautiful reflector. This produced some really nice flattering light.

In this shot, I just turned the senior and moved her to the edge of the light (the point where the sun stopped and the shade started). This allowed me to have beautiful soft light on her face, while creating a very nice hair light from the sun.

Again another senior, using the open shade technique. You can see on the very front edge of the image the edge of the shade and the back edge of the shade is right under the fence. This provided some beautiful flattering light.

(2) Now if I can’t find open shade, I usually try to back light my subjects. This is best done (in my opinion), by using the best glass you have. Usually this is a prime lens. I love my 50 mm f/1.4, as I feel lens flare and it’s ability to shoot into the sun in amazing. ** Note: This technique may not be successful with cheaper lenses, as the quality of glass isn’t as high. ** When back lighting your subject you can’t rely completely on your cameras built in light meter. If you do use your camera’s light meter set it to center-point. If you use a center weighted or average light meter reading, you are going to be thrown off by the sun. You need to expose for your subject. I often will shoot in full manual mode and lock my exposure. Back lighting is not for everyone, play around with it. I know a lot of my clients have really liked the look and even requested it for their shoot.

(3) The last technique I’ll use when trying to find good light outside takes an assistant (or a free helper whatever you can find). I will use a reflector or a diffuser. They both due exactly what they say, one reflects light and the other diffuses the light. In the image below I’m using a very large reflector. This reflector is working in two ways: first it is blocking the direct sun from hitting my subjects in the face, second it is reflecting soft light back into my subjects to fill in the shadows. For this engagement session I took my wife with me as my assistant, because this was her brother. To help the couple loosen up and bring out their own personalities I let them start walking along these old railroad tracks holding hands. As we moved I would give little directives, like in this shot, I asked Mere to look at Joe like he’s your stud of a man. Of course as you can see in Joe’s face he liked the fact that his lady was thinking of him as her stud, and in Mere’s face you can see she was dreaming of her love. Made for a great shot, but it would have never happened without my faithful assistant walking blindly with a large reflector to keep the sun off the couple’s faces! You can see the edge of the reflector in the un-cropped version of the photo below.

These are three of the techniques I’ll use on an outdoor shoot using only ambient light. Another technique I’ll use, but won’t discuss here is using speedlights.

If you want more information on open shade technique and how to find good light, check out Jasmine Star and her post Reflections: Natural Reflectors. Jasmine does a fabulous job at sharing great tips for improving your photography.

** UPDATE: Right after I posted, I saw Jasmine wrote a new blog post about her recent workshop where she talked about shooting in bright daylight. Check it out here. Notice, she back lit her models.**

The Youngrens are a great photographer couple to check out, http://theyoungrens.com. I don’t think they have a blog posts explaining it, but they are experts utilizing this technique and their work is very inspirational.