It was a beautiful sunny day, not a cloud in the sky and myself and JT were out exploring and scouting the old Red Cliff Radar Station that sits atop a hill near the edge of St. John’s. The idea for this post came to me after JT took my photo in a spot that was poorly lit and didn’t work for the current natural light hitting that spot. If we shifted just four feet to the left, he would have been taking that photo in a far better position.

First let me address one thought. The original picture (number 1) was a simple candid photo and not having perfect light for candid pictures is just something you deal with. Obviously if you’re taking a candid picture of someone you can’t exactly ask them to reposition or “do what you’re doing, but do it over here in the light”… except sometimes you can. I do it all the time. Sometimes it’s forced, wherein I’ll ask a subject to reposition and sometimes it’s organic: I see the shot I want, the facial expression or action and I’ll wait till it aligns with the light coming from the window or bouncing off a wall.

You have to do this to make good pictures and the problem with cameras is that they don’t see like our eyeballs do. This is a whole other post — Google ‘dynamic range’ — but the gist of it is that our eyes can simultaneously see information (the detail and objects) in both the dark areas and bright areas of a scene.

Which is why this picture wasn’t so great when JT shot it and still lacked a certain something when I shot him in the same spot.

While sensors have gotten much better with a broader dynamic range (seeing detail in the dark areas and light areas at the same time) in recent years, they’re still no where near as capable as our own eyes.

And that’s why you’ll sometimes see a fantastic picture and once you shoot it, it doesn’t look anywhere near as good on camera as in person.

It wasn’t that the composition, framing or posing in this picture was poor. In fact all of the technical rules and formula of photography are on point here.

But what isn’t on point is the glaring back light and lack of foreground lighting. Recall what I said about our eyeballs seeing the detail in both the highs and lows of an environment. This could have been solved with an off camera flash but again, we’re talking candid, on the spot portraits in natural light.

If this was the ONLY picture you had, it would be manageable and printable. I used Adobe Lightroom to bring back some of the detail in the trees and sky behind JT, brought down the overall exposure of the picture and again used the Adjustment Brush on his face and body to bring the exposure back up again.

Further you should remember that converting to black and white will sometimes save you and open up a photo to public usage that as a color print wouldn’t have been otherwise usable.

While this shot could have been successfully pulled off with some off camera flash, you won’t always have time to set up lights or the ability and desire to lug that much gear along during a hike. What you do have time for though, is to look around and quickly access the scene.

And this was our scene, the door to the left tucked between the two nearest columns is where the above picture is from.

If you’re looking at this scene and saying “where should I shoot this type of quick, on the spot natural light photograph?”, well, I’m going to walk you through that now.

I think most people would fall back on the rule of thumb they grew up with, put the sun at your back. Illuminate your subject in full light and snap away.

This age old adage is one that will apply sometimes but not here and here’s why.

Keeping in mind that the camera can’t simultaneously resolve high and low areas of a scene at same time, it should be apparent by now why this old adage of “putting the light at your back” and thus directly in your subjects eyes won’t work here. Yes our subject is well lit but he’s too well lit when compared to the background wall.

The background wall is well under lit when and thus, the camera — exposing for the light falling on our subject — can not appropriately resolve the rest of the scene.

You could resolve this with a scrim (think about a large fly screen that you’d have on a window) between the light and my subject, thereby dimming the sunlight a little and allowing the camera to see more of the background (and also cutting down on eye squinting), but again, we’re talking on the fly natural lit candid photographs in a small area.

So although the old adage says “put the light at your back” be weary, it doesn’t always work for each scene or setting. Rules are meant to be broken and this is one of them.

Referencing above to our 200sq/ft scene, we notice that the light is reflecting off the white concrete snow and ice covered floors on to the wonderfully colorful wall that is just begging to be used as a backdrop.

Shifting over to that very well lit high color wall and trying that idea yields the following results.

Not bad, but not amazing. He’s too close to that wall for my liking. The high level of detail in the graffiti tends to be a distracting and the colors are well, a little much when putting a subject this close.

Granted, it may work for some things. I can think of wedding pictures that I have with the couple literally leaning against high color walls but that’s a different realm and it isn’t a simple on the fly candid portrait.

This setup gives us wonderful light but it’s an even light across the frame, no subject separation via a shallow depth of field OR a difference in light from background to foreground subject.

Being even more critical I’d also suggest that the light as it hits JT — it’s bouncing from the floor up to the wall — is a little too angular, up his nose and popping facial features in a non-complimentary way.

If I take a step back it alleviates the crowded feelings of the tighter shot above. On a basic level it’s not a bad picture and for many purposes it may fit the bill, but in terms of a candid portrait it’s not as good as we can get from this environment.

JT is a little too close to the wall, too congested by the color, the angle of light is less than ideal and he’s not popping off the frame as he could be.

At a glance you may even think he IS part of the wall. Many photographers will talk about having portraits with a three dimensional feel, well this is an example of a 2D feel, with left-right and up-down being the only dimensions readily apparent to our eyes.

What do I to do here?

Simple. Combine the light on the wall in pics 3 and 4 with just a taste of the direct sunlight from picture number 3. That combination looks like this:

First the well lit and high color wall is now 15′ behind the subject, its light level is near equal (just slightly below actually) to the light falling on our subject. The intricate and distracting detail of the graffiti is minimized by the fact that it’s very much out of focus. It’s still there, the viewer still knows what it is but it’s not the focus of your inner eye as you first gaze upon this photo. This is all helped by the fact that JT is wearing a dark colored jacket and hat, serving to add contrast to the difference between he and the wall.

The long streak of light which you see in number 0 and is the key light in number 3 is now just to my camera right and the fringe of that light is what is serving to illuminate JT just gentle enough to pop him off the out of focus backdrop, add a catch light in his eyes and bring out some of the color in his scarf, face and detail in the dark areas of his coat.

The angle of the light is great here, especially when compared to pictures 4 and 5 — up his nostrils. In this picture the light is gentle but just strong enough to give a little bit of shadow depth to his facial features: defining the jaw, nose, eyebrows and smile.

All of this combines to make JT pop off the page, giving that three dimensional look us photographers always like in portraits.

Conclusion

Rules are meant to be broken and spaces are meant to be explored. Whether you’re shooting street, family pictures or even paid jobs it will always benefit you in the long run to look at your space and use the light.

None of the previous 5 photos were bad, but they weren’t great and there is always potential for something great, if it’s day that affords some good natural light to use. In an area of about 200sq/ft I was able to go from a poorly lit photo in number 1 to a zinger of a picture in number 6, all by just simply looking and accessing the scene.

Notes

For all of these pictures I used the original Sony A7 with a Voigtlander 75mm 1.8 — a manual focus lens if you must know — at f/2.8 at about a 6′ distance from camera to subject. None of the photos, aside from the highly back lit number 1, were modified in Lightroom or Photoshop other than to adjust overall exposure and curves appropriately. For all intents and purposes, these pictures are straight out of camera.