Shooting Portraits in Harsh lighting

One of the things we have an abundance of in Malta is bright bright sunlight. This post unfortunately does not apply to our harsh sun when it’s at it’s peak. This is because the overhead positioning and bright light will result in a white studio background with the added haze that will lose a lot of fine detail.

In these conditions, moving to the shade will produce much better results. However! if you are in harsh sunlight in the morning or afternoon hours before golden hour. Simply place the subject with their back to the sun and use them to shield your camera from the glare. This will produce a lovely blown out background and a golden halo for your subject. To achieve this make sure you expose for our subject’s face, otherwise the camera will try and average out the light in the scene and leave you with a dull background and dark underexposed face

This will not work well for all subjects but for kids, and young beautiful people this fits quite nicely.

Here are some example of this technique show during Milan Fashion Week

In this photo of Birgit Kos, a bit of toning was applied to the highlights