another way you can go against conventional wisdom is to shoot against
the light
this is called back lighting
I've got a rim, a halo running across my shoulders
through my hair and down the other side, it's called a rim light this is caused by back lighting
and it's making it extra decorative i feel.
Back lighting works particularly well with translucent subjects such as
a bottle of wine
glass, due drops, ice
things of that nature.
It's also great with portraits
now janey is shooting against the light with the video camera and that is why i have this rim
light
going on all around me.
To explain the technique i'm going to talk you through a back lit portrait by doing
one of Nat here.
as you can see the sun's coming from right behind us it's really quite strong
we've got the river we got some trees off into the distance there,
these are really really useful because when you're back lighting a portrait
it's often best to have your
subject against something dark,
if you have, if i have Nats head against the sky we'd probably lose that
rim lighting effect, because the sky is really really bright.
Now in order to get that
isolation against the background
i'm going to use a fairly long-ish lens because that will help me to
isolate Tash, against whats going on behind her.
when shooting into light you want to always make sure you've got a lens hood on,
the lens hood acts like your hand over your eyes when you're looking into the
sunlight yourself
if you don't use a lens hood
the chances are you'll have a milky washed out picture or a little boom boom boom
boom boom ringlets going across it.
This is called lens flare
it's great as a technique and it can look really smart but the purposes of
what we're doing now let's just say you don't want it, so use a lens hood.
so let's have a go shooting a picture of tash that's it straighten your dress out.
excellent.
now just kind of look over into the trees Nat, can we just have a moody old looking
into the distance.
Turn your face a little to your right
that's it plenty, i don't want to get too much light on the tip of your nose.
Now when you
frame-up the shot,
to make sure you've
isolated your subject against the background, suns gone down a bit but
it's still plenty enough for back light
for rim light.
just shoot the shot,
chances are the camera will get confused because there's loads of light going on
behind your subject, that might upset it and you'll need to overexpose to
compensate.
The background will get really bright but it means your subject will be the correct
exposure.
So i need to brighten up that last shot i did of Tash
i can do that by dialing in a bit of exposure compensation,
i'm going to go to plus one stop, that's going to make the picture twice as bright but
the background will get brighter but tash will become the correct exposure.
Let's re-compose the shot,
there we go, that's it Tash.
Let your shoulders relax a bit,
it's very good, we're getting good at this.
There we go that's great, Tash is now at the correct exposure.
come on sun we want more of you.
another way you could do it it would be to press the auto exposure lock button on the
the back of the camera, if you go up close to your subject
fill the frame with her or him or it, according to what you're doing
you press the
auto exposure lock button
like that,
and as long as i hold my thumb on that button
doesn't matter where i point the camera, it's going to keep that same exposure locked
into the camera
then all we have to do is re-compose your shot,
and take the picture.
Once again tash is perfectly exposed.
Alternatively you could do it manually
and that's much the same as the last technique, you just go up close
fill the frame, read of the exposure on the camera's light meter
this is a hundred and sixtieth of a second at F five point-six
go to manual mode
and set
a hundred and sixtieth of a second
at F five point six.
Just like that.
Take the shot,
job done, when you do that ignore the camera's light meter because it might say
this is way over exposed, it isn't you've exposed for the subject not the background.
That's really all there is to it.
Back lighting can add a real dinamisum to your photography and i really recommend grab your camera
on a sunny day, get yourself out there
and have a go at this.