Do you know any tips to take good pictures of people under the sun light, without using flash?

-- felipe borges (felipegsb@hotmail.com), August 04, 1998

Answers

Portraits, like other photos, need excellent light. Avoid harsh light and look for soft light. Apply the same rules you would apply to landscapes. Shoot early in the morning or late in the evening. If you must shoot in the middle of the day, get your subject in open shade. Try some filters and see what effects they have. Take notes. Repeat as necessary.

-- Darron Spohn (sspohn@concentric.net), August 04, 1998.

i agree with darron. i would add however that if shooting in full sun on a bright day can't be avoided, you might try using a large piece of white paper to bounce light onto the subject and attempt to balance the lighting that way. professional reflectors are made for just this purpose, but in a pinch, and with a little trial and error, you can rig one up without too much trouble. you could even use aluminum foil if you needed really strong light, but again, it'd be trial and error to get the desired effect.

-- jeremy beckman (5beckmans@lasercom.net), August 05, 1998.

Sound advice, especially for close-ups of faces.

If you are shooting informal groups of people, as they are walking around or whatever, you could watch out for where the shadows fall, how they create shapes on the ground that join or separate the people and any other objects in the scene.

-- Alan Gibson (gibson.al@mail.dec.com), August 05, 1998.

I recently did a glamour shoot in bright midday light in an alley with quite a bit of light coloured concrete - so it was about as harsh as you could get. We didn't have a reflector so we used a white jacket to fill in the shadow side of the face. I also metered off of the models skin and opened up 1 to 1 1/2 stops to turn it white and hide blemishes. The results were very good.

-- Andy Laycock (agl@intergate.bc.ca), August 24, 1998.