This post is a shout-out to Erin and Chris. Photographing people IS scary. Very scary for me too. We were walking down the road in Longview when I saw Andrew outside the Beef Jerky store. I wanted to photograph him against this wall mural for my cowboy series but I was too chicken to ask him. For these images (and resulting lesson) I owe a thanks to Josh who didn’t hesitate to ask Andrew if he would pose for me. Approaching people comes easy to him but not to me. That’s always the first hurdle and then comes the actually photographing of people. While Andrew made it a fun shoot, I still felt very conscious of the expectation for good photographs.
These two images are cropped from two different horizontal images. I put them together to illustrate a lesson in photographing people outdoors in the shade. You will notice that the lighting is different and it’s because I used Aperture Priority which I set to f/8. The shutter speed on the left was 1/50 sec and on the right, 1/30 sec. When comparing my images, the results from this part of our shoot were inconsistent. Then yesterday I came upon this video on shooting in open shade by Kevin Focht. If I had seen this before as it would have changed the way I did these images. Basically I should have shot wide open (f/2.8) on Manual mode and metered off Andrew’s face. Well at least Andrew’s boyish smile is enough to distract us all from my mistakes 
Hmmm… f/2.8 on manual is an option, but there is no “should have”. There are lots of options. That’s just one. There’s nothing about f/2.8 that trumps f/8 in the shade. Nothing at all. More light will hit your sensor, but that’s not the only way to accomplish that (and it’s definitely not the only change that will occur). And I’m almost always in aperture priority (albeit with liberal use of exposure compensation). Of course, I haven’t seen the video; so maybe I’m utterly clueless. Nonetheless, I stand by the absence of “should have”. Just different choices.
Your “should have” point is well-taken, Jeffrey. If I think about it, I’m hiding my lack of vision behind those words. Unlike the other tales, I didn’t really have a strong story for this series. With the benefit of hindsight, it was really about seeing a shirtless cowboy and wanting to create one image where his form was the focus.
The choice of f/2.8 could have helped in terms of pulling the eye but that’s not the only tool that would have done the trick. So yes, it’s about thinking of all the choices we have when crafting our image. In my defence, can I say that I was distracted?
I’ll echo what Jeffery said on the how to. There are a couple of different ways to do this.
Yeah it is the ‘chicken’ factor we all struggle with
He’s a little easy on the eye
Nothing wrong with the shot in f8. You could have done it in any aperture to whatever effect you wanted.
You know when you have a moment when you’re not sure if you just thought something, of if you actually said it out loud? Because when I saw the first photograph you posted of Andrew I thought ‘Dang!’. Next I thought ‘If you’re going to start photographing people, that’s as good a place to start as any!’. And then I thought ‘The composition is perfect. Those painted antlers almost look like cowboy wings’.
Okay, so when I read the first sentence of this post, I blushed and then I started laughing. And then promptly went back to that post to see if I’d actually written that. Apparently I didn’t. But I’m confessing now.
Good on Josh! And good on you for making the most of the situation. You obviously made images from a few different vantage points. So cool that you didn’t just quickly snap and walk away.
Confession is good for the soul, Erin plus it made me laugh. There’s no-one here except you, me, and a few of our good friends. I’m pleased you saw the cowboy wings! I wondered if anyone had noticed them
Hi, Sabrina. While I was partly joshing about the ‘never do it, it’s scary’ thing, I’ve HARDLY ever done it, and never for people I really wanted to capture, because of how self-conscious I am. I’me still working on my “new year’s resolutions” for 2010, photographically speaking, and well, doing portraits isn’t on the list. But it seems like I will get most of the other things on the list done, so mebbe that will go on next year’s list, or as an addendum to this year’s list. I admire your resolve in that area.
One thing that caught my eye in the post was the discussion about how to meter in shade. I haven’t seen the video ether, but I’m thinking that the f/2.8 part is to blur the background as much as possible, then spot meter on the skin tone, and one stop so the skin falls on Zone VI, and then you’re good. Now I’m curious to see how close I’ve guessed.
Thanks Chris. As Ray said to me last week, portraits can be addictive. Maybe it’s a little bit of that plus some resolve. On this journey, I’m digging deep within myself and realizing I didn’t know what I had in me. (It also helps to have someone like Josh around.)
The f/2.8 would be to blur the background but the part I missed was spot metering on the face. I think together they would have created a better portrait, closer to what I had intended even though I didn’t know what that was at the time!
One question for you, by “and one stop” do you mean plus or minus a stop?
No doubt there’s more then one way to shoot in open shade depending upon preferences and desired effect. Now I like the results you’ve got here, but it would be interesting to see f/2.8 and metering on the face.
I couldn’t help but notice, it appears these wonderful “cowboy” photos are being posted in descending age order.
Hi Sabrina,
As others have pointed out, the choice of aperture has little to do with the lighting here, but everything to to do with the aesthetics of the relationship between the subject and the background. You could shoot it either way and come up with a great portrait.
Choosing to use manual simply allows you to eliminate the effect of variations in the reflectivity of the background as you shift your composition… metering the face provides your meter with a reference of known reflectivity…. tanned Caucasian skin is a pretty fair substitute for a an 18% grey card (not exact, but close enough in this situation). Having said this, the differences here don’t seem to to be too great that they couldn’t be corrected in ACR or LR, assuming you were shooting RAW (as I know you do).
The real issue with the lighting here, at least in my mind, is the shadow created by the brim of his hat, particularly since it’s a black hat and absorbs all of the light reaching it, rather than bouncing a bit down on to his face. The deep shadow also creates a merger between his dark hair and the dark hat. However, this easily fixed by popping open a reflector and using it (low to camera right) to bounce some light back up into his face (you might also pull a bit of texture out of the fabric of the hat as well). A bit of fill flash would work as well, but I prefer to use natural light wherever possible.
Having said this, it’s still a nice portrait, but I have to ask… did you find this guy just wandering around the street without a shirt, or did you somehow coax him to lose it?
Hi Mark. It’s wonderful to see you on my blog. I have quite a collection of “Mark’s” that visit here but you have the distinction of knowing me from the beginning of my journey! (For those of you who don’t know, Mark taught the very first class I took at PPSOP.net.)
Neither of us remembered to bring a reflector which was really too bad because many of the people wore hats making it a challenge all the way around. I do think you’ve made a good point because I didn’t think about using a reflector at the time. Having used that technique before when Bryan P. was here, I should have figured out that it would work (remember that parking lot in downtown Vancouver?).
And to answer your question, Andrew was already shirtless so I can’t in good conscience take credit for all creative aspects of the shoot even though I’d like to.
Thanks again for visiting. Don’t be a stranger!