Down to Urth

In Los Angeles, where even car accidents are theater, I should have expected an audience gathering as a result of putting up studio strobe lighting and food stylist’s gear in a shopping mall food court dining area. People were eating their sandwiches and fries at the tables around my lighting gear, while others walked by questioning “what is this for?” I'm sure there were some disappointed actors! I was shooting chicken kabob and rice and in full concentration when I was approached by an employee from Urth Caffe and was asked “do you specialize in food photography?” We exchanged contact information, and a week later I was in a meeting with the chefs, food stylist, management and owners of the Urth (pronounced like earth) Caffe chain, based in Los Angeles.

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During that meeting we discussed replacing their catering menu photography, and creating new product photography of their coffee products for their website and marketing. We talked about props, backgrounds, dishes, and then walked around the restaurant, bakery, coffee roasting room and kitchens looking at locations to shoot the products and food. We decided to start with a test shoot without the food stylist to prepare a quick advertisement.

My test project was to create an image for a poster promoting gluten free bread. I brought my ProFoto Monolights into Urth’s coffee roasting room, and set up a scene in front of a stack of coffee bags and a brick wall. We started by stacking the seeded buns on white plates, but due to the name of the company decided to go with a more organic, earthy feel and put the bread on a cutting board covered with flour, sunflower and poppy seeds. Eggs, a coffee bag and a metal scoop holding flour are added as props and the right lighting - we had a poster!

Dennis Davis Photography

We started the food photography portion of our shoot at 6:00 am, hoping to shoot in front of the fireplace inside the constantly crowded indoor dining area before the peak of the breakfast customers arrived. Urth Caffe offers a discount to government employees in uniform, so local police and firemen flock to the place for some of the world’s best natural juices, coffees, teas and made from scratch pastries, breads and desserts. Much of that is in front of me on tables placed in front of the ornate, ceramic tile fireplace. I am shooting on tripod with a Canon 100 mm macro lens on a Canon 5D Mark II body, as this long lens will throw the background out of focus, and make the food on the table stand out. I had to be about 12 feet from the front table to compose my shot, and my back was right up against a table full of 4 of L.A.’s finest in blue uniforms.

“Good morning, officer” I said to the huge balding man, and went back to my business. Waiters would bring plates of food to food stylist Norman Stewart, who would pick out his favorite items, add a flower or cup, and bring in pastries and fruit plates as the mood hits him.

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Friday morning we are on the other side of the glass, still shooting in the general direction of the fireplace, but now from inside the large bakery, where the restaurant patrons on other days can see bakers preparing the pizza crusts, buns, handmade breads and desserts. Now we are shooting cakes, and the beautiful chocolate curls on top of the cakes make me want to snatch them off, stuff them in my mouth and eat them, as I have a great weakness for chocolate. The out of focus people in restaurant dining area create beautiful highlights and blurred streaks.

With food photography, the strongest “key” light is normally low and to the rear. This light skims across moist food, creating shiny highlights. My common tabletop lighting setup puts one Profoto 600 watt second monolight with a 7 inch reflector and a 10 degree grid at the rear of the better part of my tabletop food photography sets. This key light is supplemented by two additional ProFoto monolights with medium softboxes on them, to the front overhead both left and right. I add small cardboard silver reflectors in front of the food as needed to fill shadows.

However with location lighting, all bets are off. The shots in the bakery and roasting room were lit by florescent and incandescent lights with green or orange color casts. I light the food, but shoot with a tripod mounted long exposure often of 1-2 seconds to bring the exposure of the background up to the level of the flash pointed at the food. This is why you see gold and green highlights in some of the out of focus backgrounds in location shots.

Photographer in Los Angeles

Food photography requires an eye for what’s appetizing. You taste the food with your camera lens, exploring angles, reflections and points of view. Sometimes I think about food compositions as a new country to explore. There is always an angle where the food looks its best, and I mean to find it. If you’re key light is low and behind the food, then place your camera directly across from the light, and allow the light to create highlights on the wet areas of the food. This works great with meat, as it looks really succulent and mouth watering.

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Norman Stewart is an artist with food, and created some amazing arrangements that were fun to light and photograph. I shot 60 gigabytes worth of images that week, and I am still picking my favorites. Urth Caffe has 4 locations around Los Angeles, and has just licensed a branch in Japan. They use the best ingredients, import their own coffee and tea, bake all their own breads, pastries and desserts from scratch, and every plate is a vision of beauty. If you are visiting Hollywood or Los Angeles, it is a delightful feast worth the trip to visit Urth Caffe. 

Davis Photographic

Heavy Metal – LA Industrial Photography

Los Angeles is the largest major manufacturing center in the United States, with over 500,000 manufacturing and industrial workers. The city is one of the world's busiest ports, with 4.5 billion dollars recently invested to improve the infrastructure at the port of Los Angeles. Steel fabrication is the second largest industry in manufacturing, followed closely by fashion apparel. It is in this setting that Dennis Davis Photography has developed into a force in the Los Angeles Industrial Photography field.

Industrial photography work is available anywhere there are people making and building things. People who make airliner parts, clothing, furniture, package food or build houses all need to sell their products and services. They need brochures, magazine advertisements, billboards and websites, so they need excellent photography to sell these things. Larger companies have a legal requirement to create annual reports for their stock holders, and photography is always an important part of annual reports.

Clients can be found by checking the yellow pages under manufacturing, purchasing mailing lists, or by scouting industrial areas in your city. I do a monthly email blast to industrial companies listed in agency access’ database, see www.agencyaccess.com. I also send out direct mail pieces to this list.

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However, the majority of my industrial clients find me because I have a page about industrial photography on my website. This page uses keywords like annual report photography, Los Angeles Industrial Photographer, industry photographer, shipping photography, construction photographer, etc.

In most industrial photo shoots you will be asked to capture images of machines. Some of these machines will be so large that even with your widest angle lens; you cannot back up far enough to get the whole machine in the shot. I was once asked to photograph a machine that makes cardboard boxes that was the length of two football fields. For long machines like that, try your widest angle lens and from five inches away from the side of the machine, angle your lens at 90 degrees and watch the machine fade off into the horizon. For many larger machines, the best angle to shoot from is from above. Often the company will have hydraulic lifts they will take you up in, or tall ladders that will allow you to shoot from above. You can also try shooting up at the machine from ground level, looking up.

I always try to include employees interacting with the machines in at least half of my shots. This gives the viewer a better idea of what the machine does and its size. Even if the machine is not running, the employee can pretend to work on the machine with tools, pretending to repair it.

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Los Angeles County is full of big industrial companies like Boeing, Vizio and Kingston Technology. There are strip of metal, rods of metal, sheets of metal in stacks and rolls, on shelves or not. It takes a creative mind and a good selection of photographic tools to show LA clients something new. I like;

• Shooting unexpected angles, including from above and from below. If there is a lift, catwalk or ladder, I am looking for an unexpected perspective. Make sure your insurance is paid up!
• Using colored gels on lights. A background in Hollywood or Broadway New York theatrical lighting would not be wasted if used in Los Angeles industrial photography. These folks like drama! They are bored with the same old same old. So I put a magenta gel on the light to the left, and a blue gel on the light to the right and presto changeo! The boring rolls of sheet metal become a space ship from the planet bluetoe. Then change to green on the right and blue on the left. Whatever. It’s cool.

Finding patterns. I like shooting long sales of repeating patterns like spools of metal strips or wire. Patterns placed in a diagonal angle across your frame are the most dramatic.

Dennis Davis Photography

Often in Los Angeles machine shops and manufacturing plants you will see welding, torches, and open flame burning and shaping metal. When you see sparks or flame, put your camera on a tripod and go for exposures one second or longer. Experiment while looking on the back of your camera, and bracket your exposures. Stand back when the sparks get near you, or you will get burned!

 I even did one photo shoot in the City of Industry in LA  where they were melting metal in boiling pots, I am talking Terminator 2 melting metal, and dissolves everything that drops in it hot!! The men that work there every day never lack for a heater in winter! My lenses kept fogging up in the heat, but I got my shot!

I consider anything longer than I can hand hold to be a long exposure. Shooting in massive indoor spaces, anything like 1/60 of a second or shorter can require an ISO of 2000 or higher without adding flash. Add three or four flash heads on light stands in a space the size of football field, and you can light perhaps a quarter of the space. The entire building interior appears dark except the area the flash heads illuminate. I normally light the area around my subject, usually an employee working on a machine. I may add a light illuminating a wall on the opposite side of the huge building. Then I allow time and available light to do the rest. I bracket exposures from ¼ second to two seconds, popping the flash at the beginning of the exposure, and telling my subject not to move. If people walk through the background, I let them blur.

A sturdy tripod is required for long exposures, and many photographers like using an electronic cable release to eliminate the vibrations from a finger touching the shutter button.

Machine shops and industrial environments are often cluttered and messy. Metal shavings and rags, oil and empty cardboard boxes pile up and don’t get removed. Although I have sent an email to the company in advance asking for the place to be cleaned before I arrive, often it does not happen. You are responsible for whatever appears in your camera frame. If there are mop buckets, trash cans, empty boxes or whatever appearing in your picture, you need to get them moved. I recently took a photograph of a man working on measuring a pipe. I set the shot up for vertical composition, and took a number of exposures. When I switched to horizontal, I didn’t notice that someone had left a broom in the floor on the right side of the image. I had to crop the image square before I gave it to the client to get rid of the broom.

Dennis Davis Photography

The reason many industrial client are bringing in a big, high priced photographer like you is to show what they can do, often in a capabilities brochure or website. They want to demonstrate their ability to wield a pipe, make a drill bit, create metal strips, cut wood or any number of functions. You are their partner in demonstrating these abilities. You have to remember that your pictures are the company’s sales force. The company wants to demonstrate the ability to move product from point A to point B, so you need to show all 26 of their trucks in one amazing, dramatic shot. Can you do it? Are you able to make the kind of images, so that when the company’s potential clients are walking through a trade show and see the image you made on the wall, will they stop and say “wow?” If so, you have something you can sell in the industrial photography field.




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6 Reflections on Reflections

This portrait was shot on a cloudy, overcast day 

minutes before the rain started. See the image

below for how the reflector was used.

Controlling light is a vital part of creating commercial photographs. This article discusses three types of photography accessories used for controlling or bouncing light. Collapsible reflectors come in white, silver, gold and zebra, and are great for location portraits and studio work. Smaller silver or white cardboard or mirror reflectors are used for table top product or food photography, and finally cocoon shooting cubes are used when no reflections are wanted. See www.DennisDavisPhotography.com for more portraits.

I taught a portrait seminar in Denver, Colorado mid-summer. I was hoping for a sunny afternoon, but heavy clouds rolled in as we took out models outside, and day became overcast and shadow less. The workshop students were surprised when we started using reflectors to redirect the skylight into the model’s faces, bringing direction to the low contrast lighting. The reflectors created catch lights in the model’s eyes, and much better directional lighting than the students expected.

On overcast, cloudy days, I will often have my model hold a reflector at their waist level for a head and shoulder portrait. I take care that their arms look natural, and are not too wide from holding the reflector. The light from the sky bounces up in their face, creating catch lights and  filling shadows under their eyes. As the color temperature of light on overcast days or in shadow can be two or three thousand degrees Kelvin bluer than light in direct sunlight, I often use gold or zebra reflectors in shadow. Zebra reflectors alternate between gold and silver stripes. The warmth of the golden light tones down the blue from the skylight and makes the model’s skin look tan instead of blue / grey.

On sunny days I often like to place the model with the sun behind them, hitting the top of their head and shoulders. Then I hold a large reflector in front of the model, picking up the sunlight coming from behind and bouncing it into their face. This creates much more directional and natural looking light then fill flash from right above the camera lens.

The highlights on the meat are created by the key light behind the plate.

Notice the shadow in the front below the chicken. However, the detail in the 

foreground shadow is lit by the small reflector I put in front of

the plate. See www.DennisDavisPhotography.com for more examples.

Many food photographers put the key light behind the food, shining across it. This causes wet or oily food to reflect the light with beautiful highlights. I personally usually use a ProPhoto head with a 7 inch reflector and a 10 degree grid as the key light for much of my food photography. The key light is positioned behind the food and just over the top of the background, where it will create shiny highlights on the meat on the plate.

However, with the strongest light coming from behind the food, dark shadows are created at the front of the plate, where the eye will go first. I place small, silver mylar-covered cardboard reflectors in front of the plate, to pick up the key light and bounce it into the front of the plate where the shadows are. A reflector works better than adding another light, as it can be positioned and controlled better than a light on a stand could be.

At times I use white cardboard reflectors or small mirrors for still life photography, but the silver mylar cardboard reflectors are my favorite. You may make your own reflectors from “mirror paper” sold at art supply stores, or purchase them from Light Right, at http://www.lightrightreflector.com/

The wood behind the desk reflected my softboxes until

I bounced the light off of the wall. 

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Reflections caused by studio lighting as well as from windows or room lights must be controlled or eliminated in many location shoots and still life shoots, or the final image will be unacceptable. I remember shooting an executive portrait in a legal firm office that had beautiful polished wood cabinets behind the subject’s desk. Every position I tried for my lights resulted in glaring reflections off the shiny wood, and it looked horrible. Larger softboxes resulted in larger reflections. I finally bounced the lights off of one wall and the ceiling, and changed my camera angle until all the reflections were gone. A great portrait and happy client was the result.

The plastic film on the outside of these bottles reflected

every light I put on them, until I put them in a cocoon.

I tried the same technique with a still life product photography shoot last month, and it wasn’t good enough. I was shooting soft drinks that were packaged in bottles, and then wrapped with plastic film printed with the logo, flavor and ingredients. The top of the bottle was like a curved mirror, and I had glaring reflections right where the logo and name of the drink was printed. Bouncing the light off of walls or ceiling only made bigger reflections. I switched to a totally different approach that I normally reserve for chrome, glass or stainless steel products. I put the bottles in a cocoon shooting tent cube made by Redwing. Shooting cubes are much like dome tents. They have metal or plastic frames covered with white cloth.

I cut background paper to fit into the inside of the cube, then placed the client’s drink bottle inside. I put three softbox lights around the cube, left, right and overhead. The camera lens goes through an opening cut in the front of the cocoon. With reflective products made of chrome or stainless steel, your lights, stands, tripod and you will reflect in the product if you don’t use a cocoon. By sticking the lens through an opening in the front of the cube there are fewer things to reflect in the shiny product. My drink bottles now had well lit logos and flavor names, with no reflections. The client was happy, and I got paid, which was the whole purpose of the exercise anyway. 

8 Ways for an Art Director to Get More from a Photographer

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Your client has a product or service that needs some really great art to sell it. The first job of that art is to get the attention of your client’s potential customers. As they are clicking on web pages or turning pages in a magazine, the photograph has to make the customer stop clicking or turning pages and go “wow” long enough to think they might want the product or service. It is your job to come up with great ideas for that artwork.

However, in the case of photography, it is not enough that the idea is in your head. You have to pick the correct photographer that has the skill set to execute the photography. They have to have the style, skill, vision and taste to make the photography work for you, your client, and ultimately, your client’s customers. Then you have to get your ideas out of your head, and get them into the photographer’s head. Not an easy task.

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1. Draw your idea. You took enough drawing classes in design school to at least draw stick figures. So if you want the male model to be opening the car door while standing on the left, and the female model to be taking his hand , draw it that way. The biggest thing that you and your photographer have in common is that you both think visually. Words are great, but drawings communicate faster. Take the time to show camera angle and height, wide angle distortion, cropping and composition. Then use the drawings to talk through the shoot with your photographer. If they are in another city, scan the drawings and talk about them over the phone.

2. Give them a shot list. Often for the sake of economy, several shots have to be done in one day. Prioritize. Tell your photographer which shots should take the most of their time and attention. Point out anything unusual or difficult. Make sure you have drawings for the most critical shots, and review the shot list and drawings together with your photographer.

3. Quote me. After you get your shot list and drawings complete, you will normally ask several photographers to give you an estimate of what the shoot will cost. Photographers hate this step, as they are totally guessing what your budget is, and what competing photographers will quote.  In addition to the fee for the photographer’s time, this will often include costs such as stylists, hair and makeup artists, models, locations, props, studio rentals, lighting rentals and so forth.

Dennis Davis Photography

The shot list needs to have enough detail so that the photographer can quickly determine what is needed for the shoot so that they can make an accurate quote.

Some art directors will have photographers spend hours or even days preparing a quote, only to tell them “we decided to go with our regular photographer, we just wanted to make sure they were giving us a good price.” Don’t expect to do this more than once to a photographer, using people like that hurts you in the long run. If you want a quote you can take to a client, give your photographer a budget range if you can. It will save time for everyone.

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4. Show me the money. An art director needs to help the photographer understand everything that’s needed to make the shot work, including locations, models, stylists, props, clothing, cars, and so forth. The photographer has to figure out how to get everything needed, and still stay within the budget the client requires. You photographer will need help from you in two areas regarding finances; first to understand how the money needs to be spent, and second, to get the deposits and final payments in a timely fashion as you promised them. Often art directors make financial promises to photographers without first checking with their accounting department to confirm that they can deliver on those promises. The photographer suffers as a result, and in some cases, the photo shoot doesn’t deliver good pictures because the money didn’t arrive in time.

5. Inspiration. Creativity comes through the best when a photographer gets excited about the idea behind a photograph. Make the shoot fun, but help them understand the concept, feeling, mood, and thought the photograph has to communicate. A photographer is under a huge amount of pressure to produce great art in a limited amount of time. Help them work past the limitations to reach the goal.

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6. Protection. Everybody has an opinion, and it seems that everyone thinks they should share their opinion with the photographer while they are trying to focus on getting the ultimate shot. The client company’s marketing director; vice president, vice president’s girlfriend, and sales manager all want to put their two cents in. Your job is to protect the photographer from these people and their opinions. Before the shoot starts, make it clear to everyone watching the shoot that all photo direction has to come through you. If someone has an opinion, they need to talk to you about it, and you have to decide if it is worth passing on to the photographer, or if it conflicts with the “big idea” of the picture. Photographers getting conflicting directions from various people at the shoot will get frustrated, and the final artwork will suffer if they cannot stay on track.

7. Watch the details, but don’t micro-manage. Your photographer has a thousand things to think about during a shoot. Lighting, exposure, composition, reflections, colors, angles – so many details. You can watch for details that the photographer might miss. A model’s dress is wrinkled, the product needs a fresh spray of water, or the product is crooked in the shot. During the shoot, it is the photographer’s job to produce the final image, so leave them alone and let them do their job. However, if there is something they clearly missed, point it out. Just not every 3 minutes.

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8. Look early, and look often. Before the day of the shoot, discuss with your photographer how you will be reviewing the images as they shoot. You do not want to make final decisions about a high budget shoot by looking at the back of the camera. A few minutes after the first few test shots have been taken, download the images to a computer and review the first shots with the photographer, and perhaps the client if you think it will help. Now is the time to make major changes. A camera tethered to a TV monitor during a shoot viewing easier, however often the shots don’t stay on the screen long enough to be truly critical of them. Stop shooting and discuss the shot, and don’t move on to the next shot until you see a large version of the current shot that you can live with.

Most photographers are hoping with each shoot to work with an art director who will be their friend, guide, mentor, inspiration during the shoot, and then help them get paid quickly. They are hoping for someone who can help them shoot their finest work, and will not settle for second best. All good photographers are hoping for a final photograph that they would be proud to put in their portfolio, to help them get more work. If you do your job correctly, you will have a superb piece of art for your own portfolio as well. 

10 Things an Art Director Looks for in a Photographer

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And What Keeps Them Coming Back for More

Personality

You may create amazing images, but if you work with others you have to be enjoyable to be around, personable, fun and respectful. Your personality is your most important asset. If you are shooting portraits, it’s your personality that gets the model to smile, so you’ve got to be fun. Your honesty has to come through when asked a serious question, because a lot of people are counting on you bringing home the winning shot.

Punctuality

I don’t care if you think you might need another memory card for the shoot, if your call time is 9:00 am, then 8:45 am is not a good time to start looking online for a camera store. The shoot won’t start without you there, so cut back on the late night parties when you have a shoot the next day, and set TWO alarms if you want to keep your art director as your best friend.

Responsibility

When you give your creative director or art director your word, you must follow it up with actions. Make to-do lists every day, and if you can’t keep track of the preparation that it takes to make a big shoot happen, get a production manager that can. Photographer’s often have to hire food stylists, location scouts, models, clothing stylists, makeup artists, hair stylists, and at times, a fleet of RVs. How are your management skills? What can you do in addition to handling a camera?

Creativity

Can you take an idea from an art director, give them exactly what they ask for, and then make it even better? Can you visualize what the client is selling, and help them sell it?  Can you imagine what changing something small that will make a huge change in the final image? Can you make a one bedroom apartment in Kansas City look like a beach house in Malibu? What do you bring to the table that no one else could bring?

Problem Solving

With a studio shoot, a photographer has at least some control over their environment, and years of experience would have taught them what tools are most important to have at hand. But on a location shoot, the number of tools available is limited to what you bring with you. Do you need a bigger truck? In fact, learning to do more with less is a gift that the best photographers learn to cultivate.

Do you need to hide the fact that your set is missing two walls? That’s what shadows are for. Do you need 6 lights and only have two? That’s what reflectors are for. Don’t have reflectors? Look for aluminum foil. Fix the problem, make it work, now. Everyone is waiting, counting on you.

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Lighting Genius

Lighting the single most important thing you bring to the table to give an image your “look”. Other than composition, lighting is it. Read about light, study it, love it and control it. Your art director will look to you, the lighting guru, to create glamour, excitement, mood and atmosphere where there is none. Are you up to the task?

In Control

There are 1,004 things that can go wrong on a shoot at any time. However, there are some things you can be in control of. Do you have an extra set of batteries for everything you own? Do you have extra cables for everything that needs them? Have you prepared any assistants, stylists or makeup artists with emails in advance, followed up by phone calls, preparing them for the shoot? Do you have your art director’s cell phone on speed dial? Can you communicate effectively with vendors, teammates, clients, models, and still be on top of what your camera and lights are doing?

In Command

Your judgment is final. You are the only one that can say “yes, we have the shot”. You are responsible for getting everyone else involved in making the shot happen the way that you and your art director envision it. Can you get people to smile when you need them to? You can if you are funny, playful and fun. The client’s girlfriend says “I think it would look better if we changed the background color to green” If you don’t agree with that opinion, you better be prepared with a logical reason why not. You are the artist. People are counting on your sense of style to make a great image. Take charge.

Technically Skilled

Photography is a crazy marriage of technology and art, and you need to be in control of your tools. The morning of the shoot is not the best time to test out a new toy from the camera store. Your art director is counting on you to know your gear, understand your tools, and give them an accurately exposed, well composed, and in-focus image.

Love

If you are getting into photography for the money, try a different career. I am a photographer because I love beauty, I love creating and capturing gorgeous light, and I love making things pretty. You have to learn to love the simplest things, like a bottle of shampoo, and turn it into a hero, a knight in shining armor, answer to every head of hair’s needs. Do you really, really love making great images? Then follow your heart, and the money will come.

Four Portrait Setups for Available Light

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Light is all around you, bathing you with energy you can almost feel. Light has color, intensity, direction, strength, “softness” or “hardness. Light is beautiful.

Learning to love light, to embrace it in its ever changing splendor, is the key to excellent photography. Learning to control light, to redirect it, to manipulate it, is the key to making money in photography.

The inverse is also true. To appreciate the light, you have to know and understand darkness. Dark areas in a photograph create contrast with the light areas; otherwise the picture would be boring. Darkness in a picture adds mystery, interest and glamour.

Today, everybody has a camera on their phone, so any picture that was taken with even a point and shoot camera looks better than much of what we see on Facebook. However, a picture that has amazing lighting with always capture the viewer’s attention, and people are willing to pay for that attention if it is directed at their portrait, product or service.

There is only one sun. Two light sources of equal strength look stupid and unnatural in a portrait, so the light coming from the second source must be weaker in most cases. Portraits taken in direct sunlight without a reflector or fill flash are usually harsh and have high contrast, with big black shadows or over exposed areas. This is because of the nature of digital light sensors, as well as film. Digital sensors in cameras are not anywhere near as light sensitive as your eyes. Where human eyes see details in the shadows, digital sensors see only solid black or very dark areas with no detail.

Direct sunlight, as beautiful as it is on trees and mountains can be very harsh on human skin, particularly human skin with defects; all the bumps show! Makeup can help, but filling the harsh sunlight with a reflector or two can make the difference between a throw away photograph and a great one.

Portrait setup 1, outdoors

One of the best places to put your portrait subject is with the sun to their back, or behind their head with a little light touching their cheek. This lighting setup is best when the sun is low in the sky, within a few hours of sunset or sunrise. With the sun to their back, take a reflector and bounce the sunlight into their darkly shadowed face, and behold! A halo of light is outlining the person, and soft, directional light is defining their features. Just make sure the reflector is either big enough or close enough to their face to light it evenly. I prefer to do this lighting setup with the portrait subject in sunlight, but with dark trees or buildings in shade in the background behind the subject. Try this setup with the following camera settings: ISO 100, shutter speed 1/125 of a second, and aperture at f11 or even f8.

This type of lighting is very tricky for the auto exposure settings on most cameras. Often the auto setting on the camera will expose for the sun lit area behind your subject, and not for the lower light levels coming from your bounced light. So you will get your best results setting your camera on manual, and adjusting the settings until the faces are properly exposed.

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There is an old fashion rule that dates back to film days, but it still works. It is the “sunny 16” rule, and it works like this. If your subject is in direct sunlight with no clouds or shade, then the correct exposure is f16 with the shutter speed matching the ISO. For example, if your shutter speed is 1/100 of a second and your ISO is 100, f16 will be the correct exposure if your subject has direct sunlight on their front. If your ISO is 400 use the closest shutter speed, which may be 1/400 or 1/500 of a second.

Use the sunny 16 rule as a starting point in your photographs, then adjust and bracket your exposures from there. I always press the “info” button on my Canon 5D Mark II, which brings up a histogram. If you don’t know how to find the histogram screen on your camera, take out the manual or camera and find it at once! The kind of histogram graph you want to see most of the time will look like a mountain or hill, with all of the data picking in the middle of the chart. If there are large peaks of data on the left side of your histogram, your picture is very dark. If there are peaks touching the right side of your histogram, you will have over exposed areas in your picture.

In the case of the portrait lighting setup one I described earlier, you should see some very high peaks in your histogram touching the right side of the chart. That’s because the halo or outline effect you want using the sun as a back light or “rim light” should be over exposed. On blond models, the highlights of the hair may look pure white.

Portrait setup 2, outdoors

Dennis Davis Photography

Place your portrait subject under the overhang a porch or a large tree, just inside the shaded area.  One side of their face should be lit by the skylight coming in under the porch or tree, and the other side of their face will be darker, as it is further from the skylight. This setup can be done almost any time of day, even if the sun is directly overhead. You do not want any direct sunlight to fall on your subject, only skylight. Add a reflector on the darker side of their face if there is too much contrast with only skylight.

Portrait setup 3, outdoors

With the sun low in the sky, place your subject so that direct sunlight falls on only one side of their face, and the other side is in shadow. Place a reflector on the shaded side of their face for one effect, or have the subject hold a reflector at waist height, bouncing the light from below back up in their face. If you have two reflectors, try placing them at both positions as well.

Portrait setup 4, indoors

Find a large window that has skylight coming through it, with no direct sunlight. A window on the north side of the building will often be the best. Have your subject lean against the window frame, with one side of their face almost touching the glass. Make sure the background behind the subject is simple and uncluttered, and if not, bring in a plant or remove items to make the background more attractive. The soft light coming through the window should highlight the side of their face closest to the window, and fall off naturally on the side away from the window. Add a reflector next to the shaded side of their face, and see which lighting you prefer.

The light level for indoor light is much lower than the outdoor setups. You may need to use a tripod due to using a lower shutter speed. I will often use an ISO of 400 for portrait setup 4, a shutter speed of 1/60 and an aperture of around f8 or f5.6. Make sure to focus on the subject’s eyes, as your depth of field is very shallow at that aperture.

For all of the portrait setups, I prefer to use a medium telephoto, at around 100 mm. This longer lens will cause the background to blur behind the subject, and keep the focus of the picture on the person in your portrait.

Photography is painting and writing with light. You must learn to understand and control light, to make the kind of portraits people will love.

Los Angeles California Architectural Photography

Architectural Photography by Dennis Ray Davis, of DennisDavisPhotography.com , featuring architecture interiors and exteriors of commercial buildings, real estate and business photography. We shoot architecture photography in Los Angeles, Long Beach, Huntington Beach, Torrance, Burbank, Glendale, Sherman Oaks, Hollywood, Irvine, Anaheim, Santa Ana, Costa Mesa and other Southern California locations.

Dennis Ray Davis is a famous architecture photographer, shooting for clients like Panda Express, U.P.S., AutoNation, NASA and others.