most people will tell you that the best advise for shooting outdoor portraits at noon is don’t do it. but sometimes there is no choice, because that is when the client is available. tomorrow i’ll be shooting some outdoor portraits in soho and i’ve been wracking my brain to put together the best way to make the photos pop.
my challenges are threefold.
first, the natural lighting at noon is harsh and unflattering, meaning that unfiltered it will leave deep shadows on the face. to get around this i am going to be finding pockets of shade and using my reflector as a fill light. i’m also going to use a diffuser to soften the direct sunlight so that i don’t have to only shoot in shade. and last, i will be breaking out the softbox for my key light and using the sun as a hair and shoulder light. i am going to have to be super efficient in my setup and tear down given the time constraints, and think that the best option will be to save the softbox for last if at all possible so that i can put it away on my own time after the client and i have parted or finished our shoot. to be honest i’m kind of hoping tomorrow is a bit cloudy, but i will work with whatever weather mother nature doles out to me.
second, we will only have about 30 to 45 minutes to get a good variety of shots. i generally like to have about 90 minutes witt a client to make sure that we have plenty of time to explore each scene and get just the right feel. to work around this, i’m doing extra homework in advance. using google street views to pinpoint specific places where there is interesting architecture to work with so that we can move straight from point to point with as little meandering as possible between the shots.
finally, the client has expressed a preference for a natural look, so i’m going to have to tone down the theatrics on this shoot. normally i would be thinking of a million ways to get creative with lighting and diffusion, but in this case, the less affected the photo, the better. i guess maybe this isn’t a challenge so much as a limitation, and one that i’m some ways makes my job easier. but a constraint is a constraint.
on the upside, tomorrow’s photo shoot is for what you could call an influencer. beyond just having more photos to share, the client will be sharing the images with a fairly substantial network of followers, and that can only help my own channel grow. speaking of channel growth, i should update. about a month ago, i had roughly 530 followers on instagram, and today, i am at nearly 640. so definitely the use of 30 hashtags in my first comment on each photo, the use of a couple of hashtags in stories, and just generally being friendly and following back people who follow me - and probably more importantly, sending them a personal thank you note for following and liking several of their images and leaving a comment or two, is a successful strategy. about 10 accounts followed and then unfollowed, so i cut ties with them (i have an app to track this activity because i find it so dishonest). beyond follower growth, my page has been a lot more active, with my photos now averaging around 45 to 50 rather than 25 to 30. so not a massive surge, but definitely an uptick.