10 Tips for Stunning Portrait Photography

Since we live a few minutes from the beach, many of our clients want their portrait photographs on the beach. so we wrote this list of 10 tips for portrait photography sunset.

Portrait Tip #1: Using off-camera flash if you have the right equipment. Since the photos of the sunset are always back lite, a little fill flash will make the difference between dark and muddy surfaces without flash, compared to the beautiful soft light with the flash right. If you want to learn off-camera flash, but do not have a big budget, check out this previous post.

Portrait Tip #2: Although most of the sunset portraits are with flash, you can also capture a beautiful and fashionable look to expose the subject correctly and overexpose the background.

Portrait Tip #3: After shooting the classic shots, check out a couple of shooting a subject’s silhouettes against the sunset in the background.

Portrait Tip #4: Try to find a balance between openness and shutter speed. You probably want an opening of at least 5.6 for the clouds at sunset are relatively strong, but recommended opening low enough and open enough to capture enough light during low-light situation. I took most of my portraits sunset at f / 8.

Portrait Tip #5: If you can  use off-camera flash to illuminate the object, then it is better to use use a faster shutter speed to underexpose the background. Underexposed sunsets views are richer in color.

Portrait Tip #6: If the shot without flash, I prefer to shoot in aperture priority mode, while the sun is still above the horizon, but I switch to manual as soon as the sun disappears into the horizon. Aperture priority is useful when the sun is in the sky, the exposure is automatically adjusted when the subject is moving a bit much to block the sun. Even slight movements of matter can drastically affect the correct exposure.

Portrait Tip #7: When shooting with the flash, you should use a C.T.O. gel to warm light. Sometimes it seems strange to have a balanced schedule of white light to illuminate the focused object when the sunlight is usually warm.

Portrait Tip #8: To ensure that no overexposed sky, point the camera until sunset to one meter, and then recompose the shot to include the topic.

Portrait Tip #9: Ditch the white balance automatically. I’ve never seen a camera to nail the white balance for sunsets in a consistent manner. For sunsets, you probably want a white balance 3,000 to 4,000 Kelvin. If you shoot in RAW, so do not be afraid, because you can change the white balance after the fact.

Portrait Tip #10: Do not forget to apply all general extinction photography tips that are not necessarily specific for portraits.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *