The importance of the weather and to have a little bit of luck during a model shooting in a warm summer day.

Ii am often asked by my friends how to shoot this or that and so on, here's the first page of my photography tips pages. Yesterday we have shot outdoors in Trieste, Italy and the main issue in this condition was "summer" and the heat too. Why i say that summer is an issue for most photographers? Well, in theory summer is nice and hot so perfect for shooting outdoors, but at the same time you need to be careful about the light, be very careful what time you go out shooting and you need to be in total control of what is going on if you want to achieve top results and direct light how you want and not the other way around.

One of my personal favourite things to do when there is too much light or if all of a sudden sun pops out (just like it happened yesterday) or when there is just too much, is to shoot in the shade, that way you can prevent having hard shadows and you can see that the face of the model is lit equally and you do not have hard contrasts either that make some odd and unwanted effects. This translates in a softer photo, like we say in photography talk which is better than a photo with hard light because the model can actually look straight to the camera.

My model Tania was properly lit and for achieving this effect i shot most of the time in the shade just like i said in the previous paragraph, this way the clouds serve as a gigantic umbrella that is just before the sun and you can keep this suggestion, every time there is a cloudy day, it's a good idea to shoot outdoors unless you are looking for some specific effects of course. Another golden trick, if you have a good organization and 2-3 people helping you during the shoot, is to carry a very big umbrella and put it just before the sun and the model, this way you will have the same situation as when you have clouds, you will soften light because the umbrella works just like a filter. The bigger the umbrella and the more you filter the light, the softer the light will be. Trial and error is really the best when it comes to these situations.

Another interesting thing you can do when you shoot outdoors is to use a small reflector such as Impact 5-in-1 Collapsible Circular Reflector Disc - Gold, Silver, Silver-Gold, White and Translucent - 22" (i own this very one and it's really great), for directing light on the face of your model, if you have an assistant make sure that he bounces light properly and move your reflector up and down, left and right until you achieve the light you want but always remember that sun light slowly changes so your assistant must be "awake" and quick to move the reflector otherwise the effect will go away; this way you can make the overall feel of the photo a bit warmer, especially when shooting in the shade this can be very useful, for example if you check the shooting with Anna from my advertising photography, the photo where she is in the lake with the green bikini from Divissima and also from the banner at the very top, you will see what i mean. That shooting in particular was really cool since we shot outdoors and my assistant Manuel was helping me bounce the light on the model, it took quite some time for achieving that photo (with the glasses) but it was totally worthy.

By Gabrio Linari. Thursday July 8th, 2010. Have questions about a specific light setting? Contact me!