Large light outdoors
Article about flash fill outdoors
Finding natural light outdoors

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I'm shooting a large group outdoors (about 10 people) and the largest umbrella I have is 53". What about getting a bed sheet and shooting flash through it to get a giant "soft box"? Comments/suggestions please!
Robert

Dear Robert:
A bed sheet has similar properties to rip stop nylon and will take its place in a pinch. Natural light would be a far better choice when doing a professional portrait outdoors. Anytime you use flash outdoors, your image will have that flash fill look. This is something I don't feel is good for professional photography. Many photographers have difficulty learning to see light outdoors and finding great locations where true portrait lighting is present. It is there, just about everyday. Once you know what to look for, you can almost always find it. In the afternoon around sunset is the time to work. Portraits like this are usually done in wooded areas as opposed to open areas. Working near trees will give you the opportunity to look around for a large patch of open sky above but not over your subject. The light must come into the face, NOT down upon it. Just like in the camera room. The only difference is that rather than moving the lights around, you are moving the subject so that their placement relative to the light source is similar to that of the camera room. A little practice and you will never haul all that stuff out for a location sitting again.

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The article below is the result of a photographer questioning my stance that young photographers should learn to see light outdoors and learn to use it correctly without the aid of flash fill or other bulky equipment. He is in favor of taking flash outside to make portraits with flash fill. While this is no sin, I maintain that IF one has properly learned to see light and shadow and can quickly identify it and use it efficiently then that is by far the superior method of creating pleasing, professional images. I thought you might find my response helpful in understanding why I feel so strongly about this.

Hello Gene:
I appreciate your position and understand your thinking in many of the areas you discussed. We don't really have a lot of disagreement and I totally respect your feelings on how you would handle this topic. Let me just point out a couple of things that may clarify why I feel so strongly the way I do. It might make more sense once you know. First let me say that the vast majority of photographers that I deal with, either in the class room or via email are fairly new at this or have been struggling for a long time and need some real guidance. I absolutely don't discourage photographers from exploring a wide variety of techniques. The problem is that when too many things are tossed into the soup when one is in the early stages of learning, there is almost always confusion and frustration. We must all walk before we can run. What I teach my students is to learn to see light quickly and accurately. To rely on luck is not where I want them to go even though luck plays a part if you are in a place you have never been. Great light is not that hard to find. I have been in business for nearly two decades. When we go the gardens to do a location portrait, the light is always there. I just have to quickly find it. There is never any waiting around. We move from one location to the next and stay busy.

I recently volunteered to go with a photographer to the gardens to photograph a couple of children. My job was to watch and later critique his technique. This was an experienced photographer with good work and several years in business. As it turned out, the kids never came so we spent an hour walking around, learning to see light. He later told me that he only thought he knew how to see light. This was a major learning experience for him. I have encountered this for a long time. There are varying degrees in photographers ability to see light. Once they really know, it never leaves them.

With regard to the sun. My young students do not need the added complication of trying to balance a strobe or reflector with the direct power of the sun. They need to learn to see light first, learn where it is supposed to be on the face and then once they have mastered locating portrait lighting outdoors, then they can experiment with more involved concepts. They will have the tools and knowledge to learn it even better. I must respectfully disagree with you that it is difficult to find short lighting in nature. It is there everyday for the using. I would rather teach someone to see light and to master controlling it and know that they can improvise at a less ideal time of the day when they have to because they have the knowledge to do so. My opinion on flash fill outdoors must stand. Please note that I indicated that it was my opinion. I frequently judge prints at conventions and the ones with even a small amount of flash fill look so different than the same portrait would had it been done with wonderful natural and very importantly, directional light. I realize that sometimes situations happen and a photographer has little choice but to strap on a strobe and get a saleable shot. That is just fine. It is simply not what I prefer to do or to teach. We all know that there are plenty of fine saleable images that are done with flash fill that make consumers quite happy. I have never disputed that. As I am trying to say again and again, this is my preference in my practice and in what I teach. I believe that elevating the quality of our work is always a good choice to make. Seeing portrait quality light is the same indoors and out. You just don’t have a movable light outside. You move the subject instead. The single largest reason I teach my students to learn to see natural light and to make the most of it quickly and efficiently is so they won't have to deal with hauling a bunch of strobe equipment, panels, umbrellas and light stands with them on location. It's just not practical.

As I visit our public gardens from time to time, I take note of how many photographers have all of this hardware with them and how it must be set up, kept up especially if there is any wind and then moved from place to place. I just don't want all that to get in the way of creativity and good use of the available light that God provided. I prefer to take my camera on a tripod, put my meter around my neck and get busy. I can visit far more locations in the gardens not having to worry about the hardware. You won’t believe this but I actually have a chapter in my lighting book that deals with using strobes and umbrellas outdoors as a main light. I make it clear that it’s not my preferred way but if you are going to do it, you might as well do it so it looks the best it can. Now, if one decides that they simply must do portraits at noon or mid afternoon, then they are forced to use all this extra hardware to achieve a saleable result. We have the right to choose if we wish to take outdoor sittings in middle of the day. It's perfectly fine to do that. It is my choice not to do that. I typically do one outdoor sitting in the late afternoon and that is it. It's simply a choice. If I need to squeeze in two sittings in an afternoon or have to work before the sun goes below the horizon (such as with an outdoor wedding), I would elect to modify the directional light of the sun rather than trying to make whatever soft light that's there look acceptable using reflectors and fill flash. How would I modify the direct sun so that my portrait looked professional? I would use what I call a Sun Panel. This is a small hand held diffusion panel that is placed very near the subject to convert the harsh, hot light of the sun into the same high quality, directional portrait lighting that I have in the studio but without the need for reflectors or flash fill. With this method, I am not fixing bad lighting so much as modifying the direct light of the sun. It's my second choice but if I had no choice, I know I could make beautiful light in the early to mid morning or mid to late afternoon before the sun went down. If you want to see examples of how these panels work, click here to visit the page about our Sun Panels.

I hope you can see my position in some of these issues. Many photographers are taught that using reflectors and flash fill is great. I see it all the time while teaching seminars or judging prints at a convention. That is just fine if they choose to go that way. It is their right to do so. I just prefer to teach my students how to easily find or create beautiful, directional portrait lighting that looks natural and more professional.

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I feel pretty comfortable working inside with my strobes but outside I have more difficulty. I want to make beautiful portraits outside and I really want to avoid using flash fill. To me, anything with flash fill just looks terrible. I am hoping for some help with this problem. I want my outdoors portraits to look like portraits and not candid's. I guess I don't ask for much do I. Thanks for any help.
Jeanne

Dear Jeanne:
Basic portrait lighting teaches us that we should light the mask of the face. That is, the front features that would be covered by a Halloween mask. In most cases we are talking about both eyes, the nose, mouth, chin, cheeks and forehead. To light this area you must find the main source of light in the sky. I commend you for desiring to do this without the aid of fill flash. If you do what I do and schedule all of your outdoor sittings for the late afternoon you will find a wonderful soft light source in the western sky above where the sun has set just moments ago or even earlier if there is a line of thick trees blocking the direct, setting sun. Why would I not schedule an outdoor sitting in the morning you ask? Simply because I want the subject to look his or her best. We don’t want peoples faces to look puffy because they just got out of bed. A lot of people also take a long time to wake up and are not at their best in the morning. Other good reasons for not going in the morning include the fact that on many mornings the ground is covered with dew making it very wet to walk on, sit on or drag a dress over.

What about the mid day to mid afternoon time period? Well, unless it is just totally overcast it’s a bad idea as well. Most of the light will be very harsh and from overhead or near overhead causing deep shadows under the chin and in the eye sockets making your subject look like a raccoon. If direct sun is illuminating the background or other objects in the scene, you will not be able to easily correct for them and they will require expensive artwork to fix after the fact. Imagine a beautiful bridal dress with all of these bright white patches all over it because the sun is streaking through the trees. The late afternoon is clearly the most appropriate time to do a sitting outdoors if you wish to maintain a natural, non flash filled look. “This magic hour” is your window of opportunity for beautiful, soft, and yet directional light. If you are near a line of trees or hills or other light blocking objects you can find light sources in other places besides the west. For instance, let’s say you have a line of trees to the west and the view is clear to the east. If you work very near those trees, you will have as your main source of illumination, the eastern sky. Remember, this is around sundown! The open sky is a brighter source of light than the line of trees so it becomes your main light. Finding directional light is not hard. Just look around for a large patch of open sky that is not directly over head. In the studio, you move the light sources around the subject. In the outdoors you adjust the subject to the light.

How do you know that you have found good light? It’s easy. Hold up your arm with your hand pointed up and study the light falling on it between the wrist and the elbow. Does one side look brighter than the other? That is what you are looking for. A difference. Look for one side that seems to glow. Pivot where you stand and look for a noticeable glow that comes from one direction. The side that glows should be noticeably brighter than the other side but remember, you are not in the sun now. It’s not like holding your arm or hand up in direct sunlight where one side is blinding and the other nearly black. This is a more delicate difference. Notice that I said difference and not ratio. A white golf ball also makes a dandy light tester. Just hold that little fellow up, rotate yourself and observe. Once you find the location with a nice directional glow, you can take meter readings toward the light source and also facing the other direction. This will give you your difference. How simple. Let me see now, when I point the dome of my flash meter toward that big bright area over there, it reads f 8 at 1/30th of a second. When I point it toward the other direction it reads half way between f 4 and f 5.6 at the same shutter speed. In other words I have a 1 and 1/2 stop difference. A nice ratio. No hardware. Just Gods light that we found. Yes, you certainly can haul all of that stuff around and create lighting in locations where it doesn't really exist and at odd times, but why? There are so many locations that already have wonderful light. All we have to do is look for it. I prefer to just be a photographer.

I talk with my subjects and work with them and because we are not wasting a lot of time playing with the reflectors and whatever, we get to go to more locations and can then show the customer more variety. I remember a couple of years ago I had a sitting in the gardens. A short distance away there was a photographer setting up a black panel over this couples heads and there was an assistant holding a gold reflector down by their feet shooting this yellow light up into their faces. By the time he made a series of exposures in this one location, I had done my entire sitting in four locations and we were leaving. He was still in the first location! Indeed, you can use all of the panels and reflectors outside if you desire but if you can find perfect studio quality light out there everyday, as you indicated that you wish to do, then why not? Let’s make life easy. Let’s keep it simple and allow our brains to do most of the work for us. Let’s just learn to see better. I really appreciate your desire to create beautiful portraits with totally natural light. It’s there. You just have to learn how to find it.

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