Shooting in harsh sunlight

I was  visiting the in-laws in Florida for Thanksgiving so it has been a few days since I posted a blog.  I took all my camera gear and we took some family photos at my father-in-laws house.  I especially like this one of the grandkids.

Piling them all into a boat made for a great informal pose.  The sun was very bright and I have discovered that my personal favorite lighting in this situation is to have the sun directly behind the subjects so the sun doesn't cast shadows on their faces, and to lighten them up with a little fill flash.  I have tried having the sun behind me and I think it makes the light unflattering.  I have tried having the sun off to the side of my subjects, but have found the shadows to be too harsh even with some fill flash.

Keep shooting!

Ryan

Did You Forget the Fill-Flash?

Well, I made it to Florida and I'm hanging out with my wife's family this week, enjoying the warmer weather and looking forward to eating way too much this Thursday.  Last Friday I showed you this picture that I took of my brother when we were backpacking in Washington.

 
The camera exposed correctly for the background scenery.  The problem is that my brother looks like he's in the witness protection program.  I should have used fill-flash to correctly expose my brother and I am going to explain how you do that later this week.  But what can I say?  I screwed up this photo, so why not take this opportunity to show you how it can be salvaged using Photoshop and Lightroom. 

The dynamic range of the photo (the difference between the shadows and highlights) and the exposure on my brother was sooooo far off that image noise (grainyness) is going to be a huge problem.  If you look closely you can see Mnt. Rainier (I believe it was Mnt. Rainier) in the background.  Mnt. Rainier was over exposed to make matters worse.  I really like this photo though, so here is what I did to make it an image worth keeping. 

STEP ONE - I opened the photo in Photoshop and created an "Exposure Adjustment Layer."  I then increased the exposure by 3 1/2 f-stops (I told you it was way off), hit Ctrl I on my PC (Command I on the mac) to invert the layer mask, and painted my substantially brighter brother (and I don't mean mentally... or do I?) into the photo.  This is what I had after step one.

STEP TWO - Next I opened my drawing in Lightroom (one of the best programs of all times) and I put a Graduated Filter on the sky, decreased the exposure on the sky, and added some blue saturation.  Here is the photo after Step Two.

STEP THREE - Finally I applied the "Sharpen-Landscapes" preset that comes with Lightroom and I added a subtle vignette to get my final image.

All of this took maybe ten minutes and I think the photo is definately better... but, it would have be a LOT better if I had used "Fill-Flash" to correctly expose my brother "in-camera."  I will explain that technique tomorrow.

I am an early morning blogger, but the family is starting to stumble out of their beds so I am going to wrap this up for the day and enjoy some of this Florida sunshine.

Keep shooting!

Ryan