Workshop: Outdoor Portraits
- elle walker
- Feb 15, 2019
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 27, 2019
It's mid February and thanks to global warming, trees and flowers are blooming early. Bad news for the environment, but good news for this workshop. Today was all about creating portraits in natural light and using the beautiful blooms as a framing device.
Equipment
Canon EOS 7D
24 mm - 70 mm 2.8 lens
Reflectors
Natural light
Challenges
It was c10.30 am when this shoot took place, so there wasn't a great deal of time before the sun would be directly overhead and causing havoc by creating hard, dark shadows across the face. This meant we had to work quickly. There were also physical obstacles to avoid too: low walls to be climbed over, a pond to avoid falling into and slippery wet grass that absolutely no one wanted to slip on.
Location 1
Amongst the oriental cherry trees that were just beginning to bloom, the subject was positioned at a 90 degree angle so that the sun was lighting only the left side of her face.
Additional light was provided by using a reflector.
Adjustments were made using Camera Raw in Photoshop.
The image here benefited from increased exposure and reduced contrast as without these adjustments, the subject's face was too obscured.
A speedy edit was completed using a preset from the VSCO app on my iPhone. The composition benefited from a 'vintage' look, as the hair style and outfit of the subject are both quite classic and almost defy categorisation into a specific time period.
These first two images reminded me of a film called The Virgin Suicides, set in the late 1970s in America, which was directed by Sofia Coppola with cinematography by Edward Lachmann, whose body of work includes Erin Brockovich (2000) and Carol (2015).
There are shots of the teenage protagonists in hazy sunlight whilst laying in long grass, light leaks and over exposed sky. I wanted to recreate this look, so in Lightroom I took the following steps:
Then in the HSL panel:
Hue
Green - 3
Saturation
Green + 27
Purple + 2
Magenta + 17
Luminance
Green - 5
Magenta - 8
Finally, Presence was adjusted as follows:
Finally, I added some noise.
ISO 100. 50 mm. f/4.5. 1/200 second.
Location 2
The second location was situated beside a small pond, surrounded by trees and interesting stonework.
The difference between the two images is quite clear. The first image has a very contemporary look: strong contrast, vibrant colours and sharp focus. This could be an image used in modern advertising or editorial. The second image, however, is more reminiscent of a past age. An image like this is very evocative of the photographs produced in the 1970s and 1980s, which would have been processed by a chemist on cheap colour film. The colour profile is quite flat, as all richness and depth has been removed and with it, the flash of warm light across the face that was provided by the reflector.
The ISO remained static at 100, as with so. much bright sunlight, there was no need to alter it, as by doing so would have introduced noise.
Both of the images met the needs of the brief: create a portrait (done), using natural light (done) and create interesting texture with the use of blooms, leaves and the like (also done) but what has changed is how the photograph can be re-contextualised through post-production.
Contact sheets
References
Hunter, M. (2015). The Virgin Suicides. [online] The Soul of the Plot. Available at: https://thesouloftheplot.wordpress.com/2015/05/12/the-virgin-suicides/ [Accessed 20 Mar. 2019].
AnOtherMag. (2019). Lessons We Can Learn From The Virgin Suicides. [online] Available at: http://www.anothermag.com/fashion-beauty/8301/lessons-we-can-learn-from-the-virgin-suicides [Accessed 20 Mar. 2019].
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