Bright sunlight with portraits

How to deal with bright sunlight with portraits is challenging. Here are some tips to make the sun with work you.

When it comes to people’s faces, the hard direct light from the sun can be unkind. But this doesn’t necessarily mean we can’t shoot outdoor portraits on a sunny day – we just need to know how to work the angles.The traditional advice for photographers is to shoot photos with the sun behind them, as this results in frontal lighting on the subject. But for outdoor portraits, if the frontal light is direct sunlight then there will be harsh shadows – and the portrait-sitter will probably squint too.

One way to fix this is to reverse the positions, so that you and your camera are facing the direction of the sun, and the subject has the sun behind them. This potentially gives us three outdoor portrait improvements in one. First, it throws the subject’s face into shade, making the light softer and more flattering, reducing the risk of harsh shadows emphasising wrinkles or less-than-perfect skin texture. Second, it creates edge lighting, giving our subject a halo that emphasises the shape of the head and body. And third, it creates a nice separation between the person and the background. One final note on safety: never look directly at the sun through your DSLR’s viewfinder. If you’re putting your model between yourself and the sun, use Live View for composing and checking focus. That way you won’t risk damaging your eyes.