Family Portrait Photography | Having Fun With Backlighting

© 2011 Wazari Wazir | My Family Portrait Photography Session | having Fun With Backlighting

This is a new location for me, well not really new actually but this is the first time I’m photographing here. I’ve been eyeing this place for quite sometime, I know that I will get a better light here especially is I shoot in the early morning or late afternoon and when the light or the weather is fine, I could get a best result. It was a small hill actually and from here we can get a better view of Kuala Lumpur skyline, famous Malaysia landmark such as Petronas Twin Tower and Kuala Lumpur Tower can be seen from here and a favorite spot to watch Kuala Lumpur at night because the view is amazing and the best part is, it is not far from my home, within ten minute drive from my home, I can reach here and it is not a steep hill.

I really enjoy shooting into the light, playing with backlighting especially where the lighting coming from my subject and I was facing the light. It is tricky lighting condition which an fools our camera metering. I’ve received a lot of email wanted to know how to shoot into the light, they tell me that most of the time, they will get a dark picture, their main subject turn into a silhouette, can’t see their face.

Photographers have their very own shooting style dealing with this tricky lighting condition, some like to use flash to fills in the shadows and some like to use reflector to bounce back the light to the face of their subject. I like to shoot with just natural light, no reflector and no flash. Most of the time I use Manual Mode, Manual Exposure Mode. To get away with tricky lighting condition, I will use Spot Metering function in the camera to take a reading from my  subject face. I believe that most DSLR camera nowadays have this function, have this Spot Metering option but some of you might not know how to use it and what’s it for.

Spot Metering will only take exposure reading from a very small area in the frame, while other metering like Matrix metering or Evaluative Metering will take a reading from all over the frame and make an “average” reading based on each area in the frame, if let’s say you are photographing a person walking along the white  sandy beach, you are facing the light and you wanted to captured the person whole body from head to toe and your viewfinder were fills with bright area of the sea and you are using Matrix Metering or Evaluative Metering, for sure the camera “think” that the area is fills with bright light, so based on that scenario, the camera decide to get an average reading of the scene and because of the large white or bright area in the frame, for most of the times, you will get a silhouette, your subject become silhouette, but if that is what you want, then it’s ok, but if you want your subject to be  seen clearly, wanted to get properly exposed for their face, use Spot Meter and take a reading from that person face only, and the best thing to do that is with Manual Mode.

Why I said Manual Mode instead of Program Mode? Let’s say you use Program Mode and use Spot Metering function, you already take the reading from your subject face and you decided to change the composition, when you take the reading, you put the subject right in the middle of the frame but you decided to play with RO3 or you want to position your subject according to Rule of Third, position them either close to the left or right and when you do that, the exposure will change and you will get a silhouette. top most experience Photographer they know how to “Lock” the exposure but most of you who read this far does not know how to do that, otherwise why bother reading this article right?

So for me the best thing is use to Manual Mode, when you have taken the reading from the subject face and wanted to reposition the subject or you wanted to change the angle, you can do that and the exposure will not be change, yes you still can see in your viewfinder that your metering suddenly shows that it was overexpose for few stops, need not worry though, the camera will shoot base on your initial “Spot Metering”.

For sure the background will be overexpose and will be burn out and you will get flare coming from the lighting but that is the fun of backlighting. If you want everything well exposed, the background well exposed then use flash to balance the light but that’s a different subject, that’s is your choice, for me I just wanted to keep it like this, no flash and no reflector.

But here a little secrets, you will not get the result like what you seen here, the original picture of the background were white, pure white, to get that yellowish warm tone, I do it in the Photoshop, that’s how I get this color, that how I get the tone. If you wanted to know about the editing, just click the banner below and when combining with good backlighting picture, you will get a great result.

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