Outdoor photoshoot

bass_junkie83

bass_junkie83

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I have been asked by a friend of a friend if i would be willing to do a photo shoot for her.
She is a dancer and wants some modelling type shots done for her portfolio. There will be a combination of indoor and outdoor. The indoor ones i am not too worried about, but have never tried anything outdoor.

I have at my disposal three 200w heads, two 60cm square soft boxes, one reflective umbrella, a snoot and a barn door with gels and a reflector.

I'll probably by then also have a reflector holder just to make life a bit easier.


Now all this is mains powered so location is limited to the length of my extension lead, fortunately the girl come from a rather well off family with a large house with nice grounds.

It is an unpaid job, i have made clear that i too am out to gain experience to put my own portfolio together so there are no high expectations as such, but of course i want to do the best i can.

Any general advice that would be useful for this kind of shoot will be greatly appreciated. :)
 
Hmmm. I guess being a dancer she will have a better idea of posing than me anyway.
 
You already know that the subject and the background are in fact two separate subjects and each needs to be lit separately. That applies to outdoors as well as indoors.

But of course you can't control the light on the background, so all you do is to choose a shooting position that lights the background the way you want (assuming that you have sun to make it more interesting) and then light the subject to suit.
Set your lights at high power and close to the subject if you want the background to be darker than the subject and control the effective power on the subject by aperture choice and the effective power on the background with your shutter speed.
 
Many thanks Gary, that's very helpful.

I shall have a practice with that technique before hand. :)
 
Ask the dancer to find some poses she likes tha you can recreate. That way you will defintaly get ones she is happy with, as well as whatever inspires you on the day.
 
Garry Edwards said:
You already know that the subject and the background are in fact two separate subjects and each needs to be lit separately. That applies to outdoors as well as indoors.

But of course you can't control the light on the background, so all you do is to choose a shooting position that lights the background the way you want (assuming that you have sun to make it more interesting) and then light the subject to suit.
Set your lights at high power and close to the subject if you want the background to be darker than the subject and control the effective power on the subject by aperture choice and the effective power on the background with your shutter speed.
Click to expand...

One cheap(ish) way to achieve separation in bright sunshine (if the scene lends to it) is to use a small gazebo/tent type thing over the subject which you can crop out of the shot. That way the subject is in shade an the light can be controlled indenpentantly to the background which is still visable. Can be used to great effect and really make the subject 'pop'. If the gazebo has sides then it can be 'configured' to block side light etc.
 
As a very rough rule of thumb I tend to shoot portraits into the light and fill in with flash, depending on the background.

Do a bit of research, find poses/lighting you like and start there.
 
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