Outdoor lighting--sometimes a hat can throw you off!

Shooting outdoors and controlling your lighting all day is a topic that I cover in detail in my book Portrait Lighting for Digital Photographers: The Basics and Beyond. I talk about the need to modify midday sun by using some kind of shade. The shade will certainly soften the shadows created by the harsh light, but it creates a situation where the light falling on your model is less than what is illuminating the background. I show what happens when you expose for your model's skin tones and then what happens when you expose for the background. The key to balancing the two exposures is to use a strobe to bring the light values of what is illuminating his or her skin up to what is lighting the background. I know that trees, overhangs and thin fabric create the solution--and problems described, but what about a simple hat or cap? Would the brim of the cap be enough to cast enough of a shadow to underexpose your model's face too much? We set out to find out.


Rayna is a former University of Hawaii Wahine Volleyball player. I met her in the stands one day after her playing days had ended. We managed to keep in touch and finally got together for a shoot. We shot four themes at Sand Island on Oahu: a dress with Honolulu as a backdrop; a "grungier" theme by an old junkyard; a sarong by the beach and some swimsuits. Rayna's junkyard outfit included a baseball cap so I wondered about what it would do to the exposures.

I first shot some images by taking a meter reading of the light surrounding Rayna. The background is indeed beautifully exposed and the light on her face is soft and pretty, but we do see the tell tale signs of an underexposed model: the light under her hat is less than the background because of the shade cast by the brim of the hat.












We placed the light meter under the brim of Rayna's hat to get the exposure reading for this photograph. The light on her skin is still soft and beautiful--and the exposure for her skin is more accurate, but we have lost the background. Exposing for the shade overexposed the background.













The key to this image was, just as in the examples in the book, to add light by using a strobe. We knew the exposure of the background from the first shots in this series so we adjusted the strobe to give us a combined ambient/strobe exposure that balanced Rayna's skin tones with the background.













The shoot with Rayna was a blast! We tried unsuccessfully to find time to work together for about 7 months. It was worth the wait! She is such a nice person! She photographs beautifully and is a pleasure to work with. Here are more images from the shoot:













































COMING IN NOVEMBER 2009!