Stan Horaczek has put together a great article on fall portraiture, over at Popular Photography.
He is giving us tips on how you can capture astonishing outdoor portraits in the fall, without making them look cliché or over-dramatic. Are you making the most of fall nature in your portrait photography? Feel free to share some of your best tips in the comments below!
Don’t forget the details
I love shots in the fall. I figure, nature is putting on such an amazing show, I want to get as much of it as I can into my photos. Like any other portrait session, though, the details can make all the difference. If you’re thinking about your portraits in terms of a cohesive group rather than a single photo, the details bring out things that might not otherwise be obvious. Have your subject pick up some leaves or shoot their shoes as they stand in a pile of leaves. It helps tell a story rather than giving you a random collection of nice, but disjointed portraits.
Use backlight to your advantage
Backlighting portrait subjects is a very popular technique at the moment, but fall really is the best time to do it. You get the typical, dreamy flare effect that so many shooters (myself included) are fond of, but it also tends to give the leaves an amazing illuminated appearance.
I prefer to keep the sun out of the frame, blocking it with he subjects themselves or keeping it just out of frame, but you can do it either way based on your preference. Practicing with your lenses to find out how they react to backlit subjects is definitely a good idea. Lenses can flare in very different ways, and sometimes a small movement can mean the difference between an image that’s dreamy and beautiful and one that’s totally washed out.
Don’t get stuck shooting wide open all the time
When we think of portraits, we tend to think of fast lenses and blurry backgrounds, but you can approach fall portraits more like a landscape photo. If you’re thinking in that mindset, F/1.4 doesn’t make much sense anymore.
By stopping down to F/8 or even beyond, you can get sharper backgrounds and leave some of the focus on the leaves, which are what brought you outside in the first place.
Read the full article with even more tips over at Popular Photography.
Source: Popular Photography
