Portrait Photography | Backlighting Photography Tips

© 2011 Wazari Wazir | Portrait of My Son | ISO 200 | 50mm | F2.0 | 1/640 | Spot Metering

Talking about Backlighting in photography, some photographers either like it or hate it as simple as that. One of the reason why they hate it maybe because it is so hard to control the exposure especially if we are shooting with a Program Mode, because most of the time our subject will look dark. I like backlighting simply because I like the mood and the flare that it produce, and I want to keep  it that way. Most of the times a photograph will look imperfect when we are trying to play with backlighting but that’s what I like about it. Sometimes a picture that we consider “perfect” are quite boring to look at, lack of a feeling something like that, because as a human we are not perfect and never will be.

Simple tips for shooting into the light or Backlighting photography is to use “Spot Metering” , set your camera metering mode to Spot Metering, I believe most new DSLR today have this function. When we set the camera to Spot Metering, the metering will only take a small portion within the frame to calculate the right exposure, unlike Multi Metering or Matrix metering where our camera will make a calculation for the whole frame. Spot Metering on the other hand will only take the reading from a tiny part of the frame, in this case I took the reading on my son face because his face is what is most important n this photograph.

I don’t mind if the background blown away or burn out because it is not important for me in this photograph, unless the background have a story to tell. I really suggest you to use MANUAL Mode instead of Program Mode, the reason is that even if you use Program Mode and set your metering mode to Spot Metering, whenever you want to change the angle of the subject, the metering will change, let’s say for an example, you took the reading on your subject face which in this case in the center of the frame and alter on you decided to recompose the shot and position your subject at one third of the frame, either close to the left or right of the frame, talking about “Rule of Third,” for sure your metering will be affected because the position of your Spot Metering has changed and they will took a new reading and when the new “Spot” is bright area, for sure you subject will look dark or becoming a silhouette. But off course you can counter this problem is to “Lock” the Exposure or using Exposure Lock button only if you know where the button is and how to use it but it is cumbersome to use.

So try to shoot in manual Mode, use the Spot Metering and when you want to reposition your subject and don’t want your subject to in the center of the frame, the exposure still remain the same. Actually for most experience Photographer they can set their exposure where the focus sensor is “Left or Right” but for most newbie their focusing sensor is right in the middle of the frame most of the times so it i better to use Manual Mode, take a Spot Meter on their subject face and recompose the shot and need not to worry about the exposure because it will not change when you change your angle.

Some people like to use flash or reflector to kill the shadows, that was great, but for me it will only kills the mood. The reason why I like to shoot my son portrait in backlighting situation without using flash or reflector is because I like the effect, I like the flare and I like the “imperfection”. Just another tips for someone who like to shoot with 50mm at wide aperture like f1.8 or f2 like what I’m using for the picture above, always make sure you are using fast shutter speed, I rarely use less than 1/100 when I use 50mm at wide aperture setting, as you can see, I’ve wrote there that I use 1/640 for this picture at ISO 200. The grain did not come from the ISO but from the Photoshop editing, I purposely add the grain to get the result that I want and that is another story.

The main concern when dealing with backlighting photography is the exposure and if we know how to get around with it or how to control the exposure, shooting into the light will produce a great result. off course it is not great compared to when you are shooting with flash but for me I like the result and just to let you know also that I rarely use flash or reflector for any of my son picture, most of the times it was taken using just natural light or available light. Learn how to control the exposure, especially metering and you will enjoy photography more.

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