What We Tend to See

An important factor to consider when it comes to portraits and what really separates the ammeter from the seasoned veteran is the attention to lighting. Take this picture above and let me break it down for you. Janae is exposed decently, but everything around her is quite a bit blown out (I’m pointing at you, sky!). The picture is not entirely terrible, but we see pictures like this every single day, so how can we improve?

Getting Warmer

This next picture may not look like we are going in the right direction, but give me a minute to explain! What we want to do is expose the sky to look natural and normal. This day in particular was a cloudy day but still giving some light around us outside. The only problem now is that our model is a bit dark. You may think that fancy software is the key to fixing these problems we’re running into, but strap in and prepare for me to show you the best way to combat this and make our pictures, well, epic!

Truly Epic

By looking at the proper exposure needed for the background of our scene, all we need to do is add some light to our subject and BOOM! We’ve got an epic portrait that stand out defiantly next to the other examples. For this shot I had two speedlights lighting Janae, one light right off to my left and the other behind her and casting a nice backlight onto her hair. This really works and is used by most all professional photographers and can take your boring pics to the next level.