Guide

Quick photo tip: The model stands in the light

Dominik Bärlocher
29.10.2018
Translation: machine translated
Support: Livia Gamper
Pictures: David Lee

Sometimes people simply turn dark in photos. A simple trick can help.

You know the situation: You take the perfect snapshot in the sunshine and the person in front of the camera looks like a mixture of an image and a silhouette. But you want to take a photo of your model in the sunshine.

This is a question of exposure and for professionals, the following three elements are important in a photo:

  1. The light
  2. The light
  3. The light

But one trick is enough for beginners.

The thing with the sun

Most of the time, your light is the sun, because you rarely have spotlights or spotlights available. So you have to rely on the sun.

For portraits of people, you are usually looking for soft light, i.e. light that is distributed more or less evenly everywhere.

  • The cloudier the weather, the softer the light
  • The sunnier, the harder the light

It's easy to take a snapshot in cloudy weather because the sillhouette effect doesn't even materialise. In the sun, however, you need a trick: you can see your shadow in front of you.

In practice: looking into the light

If you take a photo in which you as the photographer have the light in your face, it looks like this

Livia gets a halo, but gets a little dark in the face
Livia gets a halo, but gets a little dark in the face

In theory, it looks like this

The light source shines into the camera
The light source shines into the camera

But if you have the light behind you and your model is looking into the light, the following happens

Livia is well lit
Livia is well lit

In theory, it looks like this

The light source is behind the photographer and shines on the model
The light source is behind the photographer and shines on the model

Admittedly, we took this photo in bad weather. But even then, it can happen that the face is too dark against the light.

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Journalist. Author. Hacker. A storyteller searching for boundaries, secrets and taboos – putting the world to paper. Not because I can but because I can’t not.

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