Alluring Beach Photos with Backlighting or Direct Sun (VIDEO)
People are spending more time on the beach to escape the sweltering heat and there’s no better way for photographers to enjoy these outings than by capturing beautiful portraits that tell a welcome story.
This tutorial featuring portrait artist Anita Sadowska explores two situations at your disposal—backlighting and direct sun—and takes a deep dive into the most effective techniques. She’s an experienced fashion and boudoir specialist based in Bali, Indonesia and she leverages these skills in the 11-minute video below.
The behind-the-scenes shoot takes place during a beautiful windy day at a spellbinding beach on the west side of Maui in the Hawaiian islands. Anita does more than illustrate her favorite methods for harnessing natural illumination, by providing gear recommendations, posing tips, recommended camera settings, and important advice on composition.
Anita and her model arrived early during soft morning light, but something didn’t quite add up at first: “it’s not that my photos were bad in any way, but I just wasn’t feeling it because my images were flat.” Then she simply flipped her model around, facing in the opposite direction, and good things quicky began to happen.
As she says, “I now loved how my photos looked with the model backlit. The shadows were still relatively soft, the sun was reflecting back on the subject nicely and there was no harsh contrast.” Of course there’s much more to composition than turning your model around, and Anita illustrates the creative possibilities that occur by experimenting with camera angles and shifting your vantage point (either higher or lower).
Along the way you’ll pick up valuable tips for effective posing that work equally well in other situations indoors or out. Anita demonstrates how you can capture a variety of pleasing looks with lenses of different focal lengths and by modifying camera settings accordingly.
In fact, there’s a list of the gear Anita prefers in the description beneath the video. Be sure to visit her instructional YouTube channel where you’ll find many more tips and techniques for capturing picture-perfect portraits.
And don’t miss the related tutorial we featured with another accomplished instructor who demonstrates how your camera’s RGB histogram may yield better photographs in difficult light than the more familiar Luminance histogram.
