Simple Gear, Natural Light and Quality Portraits

Photography, at its most basic, is all about capturing light.  Without it photography is impossible.  But you don’t need to rely on expensive flash units or studio strobes to get light working in your favor.  In fact, working with simple gear and natural light will produce stunning portraits at a fraction of the cost with none of the trouble.

From spring to fall I shoot outdoor portraits and last June a local band hired me to take photos for their new website and promotional pieces.  Wanting to shoot on location, our shoot was in front of textured stone walls.  I was shooting horizontal portraits to be used for CD inserts, so I immediately wanted to use a shallow depth of field to show the musician, not the background, and create some nice separation.

With my preferred location portrait lens, a 70-200 f/4L IS mounted to a Canon 5D,  I set the camera to aperture priority at f/4 to achieve the desired shallow depth of field.  I instantly ran into a technical problem.  It was impossible to use a flash because the shoot was at 11am and the sun was shining brightly, so at f/4 the shutter speed would exceed the maximum sync speed of my flash.  The sun’s high angle was causing harsh shadows under the eyebrows and under the chin of each band member.  This was not acceptable.

Out came my 5-in-1, 48″ reflector. This would allow me to utilize the sun and bounce the light off the reflector where I needed it, in this case, on the face of the person I was shooting.  Because I wasn’t using a flash, there was no maximum sync speed that needed to be considered.  Aperture priority mode at f/4, yielding approximately 1/1000 shutter speed, worked perfectly.

In this photo, you can see how the depth of field helps bring the attention to the subject, but also pay attention to the top of his head.  You can see the sun reflecting off his hair and the top of the shoulders, further helping to create separation from the background.  So how did the reflector help?

Utilizing the reflector in this photo helped to fill in the shadows on his face from the sun directly above him.  It also added the desirable catch-light, or glimmer of light in his eyes.  Right around 8 o’clock in his pupils you can see a little speck of light, a direct result of the reflector.

Here’s the setup of how I achieved this shot:

Obviously someone had to hold the reflector, in this case the other band members helped, but an assistant or friend would work too.

Due to the shallow depth of field I was after, a flash simply wasn’t an option, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only time to utilize a reflector.  Most foldable reflectors are a fraction of what a new hot-shoe mounted flash, or an expensive studio strobe costs but yield great results when you need to control a light source.  Additionally, 5-in-1 reflectors feature a translucent diffuser with a reversible, two-sided cover for maximum versatility.  The translucent diffuser on it’s own is great to hold above a model during bright, sunny days.  The covers usually feature gold, silver, white and a gold / silver combo to warm and cool the light source you are reflecting.  My 48″ reflector folds to about 14″ for easy travel and is one of the most versatile light modifiers I use professionaly.

Tagged as: location, natural light, Portraits, Reflectors