I'm doing my first outdoor portraits this weekend using something other than natural light. Needless to say I'm fairly inexperienced. I have a couple reflectors and access to a Canon 480EX and a couple smaller Vivitars. Can you guys help me out?
There is a wealth of information. More than you can absorb b/4 this weekend. But you should be able to find w/ the search function about mixing flash and ambient.
Put the back of the subject to the sun keeping direct sun off the face and side of the head. Add diffused fill flash from directly above the camera, preferably on a camera-flip bracket to avoid the flat flash look. Control ambient light exposure with the shutter, flash lit foreground with flash power. Adjust background exposure first, then increase flash until a pleasing balance is obtained.
Next level of complexity:
To the set-up above add an second flash off axis, 45 degrees from the nose and higher than the eye line for "short" lighting on the front of the face overlapping the "neutral" fill over the camera. You'll have the equivalent of a 4 light indoor set-up:
Fill Flash over camera
Key Flash off-axis
Background light (the Sun)
Hair Accent Light (the Sun)
One of the factors in making lighting work in portraits in the holistic sense is selecting clothing and background which are non-distracting and which the face will contrast well against. What the light reflects off of has as much bearing on what will attract attention to the faces or distract from them as the lighting does.
The easiest to manage combination is darker long sleeved clothing on an med-dark background. If the subject is wearing light clothing find a matching light tone neutral background so the clothing will recede perceptually and the contrasting face will project.
Click the WWW button below for some tutorials you may find helpful...
