Jamie is the daughter of our good friends, Jimmy and Wendy Lassiter. I had seen Jamie in December at my daughter Ashlee’s wedding and I knew how beautiful this shoot was going to be. Jamie really needs to be modeling. Now comes the difficult part – choosing which images to use for her senior prints and album!
Special thanks to my friend and fellow photographer, Amy Weison, who recommended shooting at Old Settler’s Park in Round Rock. It provided some fun backgrounds and the lighting options were incredible. Thanks Amy!
You will note that I used backlighting on a number of these images (particular obvious in those images with the hair highlights). Amatuer photographers often quote conventional wisdom to “have the sun at your back” when they shoot. There are times we want to do this, but these images, while well lit, tend to be very harsh light with squinting subjects. The key to using backlighting is to expose the subject correctly (in most automatic settings, the camera will “see” the bright background light and underexpose the subject). To do this, you need to shoot in manual mode where you can control the exposure. If you want the background to be dark, you will generally need to light the subject with flash – and preferably not “hot” direct off the camera flash, but off camera flash softened with an umbrella or soft box.
For most of Jamie’s images, I set the exposure to properly expose Jamie’s face and just let the background go “light”. As much of the background was greenery, it was still reasonably dark (and I further darkened some in postprocessing). I also like to use just a touch of flash (typically set about 1 1/2 stop under the exposure level) just to brighten the subject and bring out color.
One last very important point when shooting backlit shots, you do not want the sun to be directly shining in your lens or you will get lens flare and lose all the contrast in your image. To prevent this, try to find a spot where your lens opening is shaded by a tree or other object while your subject is in the sun. You can also have an assistant hold a “gobo” (a “go between”) between the front of your lens and the sun. Obviously, it must be held such that it is not in the image. My son Michael assisted and did this on the shots of Jamie lying in the grass. And you should always shoot with your lens hood when shooting. These always improve the contrast of an image by eliminating much of the stray light from entering your lens. On a backlit shot, your lens hood is absolutely essential.
