Dynamic Range In Portraits... help please

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zachhwilliams

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Hi, I have a friend who's a photographer and I get on quite well with him (in fact, I helped/watched on this shoot), he takes what I think are really nice portraits, there is a great dynamic range, by that I mean the foreground is nicely exposed, and the sky is correctly exposed too.

Here's an example
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chocolate_monster/5101910624/

Any idea on how I could achive that? I have an engagement shoot later on.

Cheers!
 
In that photo, it looks like the vignette has brought down the exposure of the sky.

It could also be a blue graduated filter. Which will be either done on camera with a Lee/Cokin type filter. Or via lightroom.

Hope that helps a bit
 
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The dress looks overexposed to me in most of his shots, and I would imagine he is using some flash for the people and ambient for the background. Probably some Lightroom or photoshop adjustment to the sky aswell to get the colour in there.
 
zachhwilliams said:
Hi, I have a friend who's a photographer and I get on quite well with him (in fact, I helped/watched on this shoot),

Any idea on how I could achive that?
Click to expand...

Instead of us having to guess, why don't you tell us what he did? Did he use reflectors or flashes?

Or, if he is a friend, just ask him? :)
 
TCR4x4 said:
The dress looks overexposed to me in most of his shots, and I would imagine he is using some flash for the people and ambient for the background. Probably some Lightroom or photoshop adjustment to the sky aswell to get the colour in there.
Click to expand...

I agree with this, the detail in the dress is blown out in a lot of the shots. I'd say he's exposing for ambient then adding fill flash. Personally I think it would look better with flash to expose the dress properly then another flash to correctly expose the skin tones.
 
You were there you said? I wasn't there and I would say he used a flash.

Camera in manual mode, meter for the background and underexpose by around a stop, use manual off camera flash to bring exposure up on the subject. If using on camera flash just use TTL flash and dial in some flash exposure compensation to taste (personally with Nikon around -1.3 to -1.7) but with canon you probably ony need around -1.0 to none.

You can get away with on camera flash for fill during the day but off camera flash will look a lot better and at night you really need to use off camera flash to make it look decent because the flash is providing most of the light on your subject.


He is definately using off camera flash in some of his work, were you holding a flash for him on the day you helped?
 
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BTW you better start practising because although I said its easy to tell you how to do it, it takes some practice to get right.

Why don't you get your friend to help you, maybe even get them to come along on your engagement shoot.

If the light is really bright you might want to use high speed sync with the flash, you will need to get the flash close to your subject though as this mode cuts flash power considerably. The brighter the light you are trying to overcome the more powerful strobe you need.

An alternative is to use a reflector during the day, that way you are not limited by the max flash sync speed, the reflected light is continuos so its just like an ambient exposure.
 
Looking at the shots it looks like several different things, some are lit by flash probably off camera, others look like just the ambiant light or maybe a bit of fill flash, they also have the colours bumped up, possibly the viberance slider in lightroom or photoshop, and a few have what looks like a gradient filter as well.
 
swanseamale47 said:
Looking at the shots it looks like several different things, some are lit by flash probably off camera, others look like just the ambiant light or maybe a bit of fill flash, they also have the colours bumped up, possibly the viberance slider in lightroom or photoshop, and a few have what looks like a gradient filter as well.
Click to expand...



Yeah I just had a look at some of his other work, he is definatley using off camera flash sometimes, usually at night. And it looks like on camera fill during the day sometimes.

The gradient looks like it might have been done in post, I'm sure the OP would know what gear he was using on the shoot he assisted.
 
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