Pascaline’s much older now.  At 14 years old, she launched her own Senior Portrait photography business and is booked almost every weekend in the spring and fall.  In one year, she’s grown her business exponentially, saving every dollar for college.  This is a photo from one of her own photo shoots.  Yep, she shot the whole thing in manual mode.  And she LOVES to play with lighting.  I have to wonder if her deep understanding of lighting was influenced from the weekend Brian and I decided to build a Barbie-sized studio to understand studio lighting.  (Read below for summer lighting tips.)

This lesson will translate into summer lighting too.  The summer can feel like a relief from the gloomy, dark winter days.  But what do you do with harsh shadows at a summer picnic?  Or what about the bright sun that makes your subjects squint?  Too much light can be as problematic as not enough light.  I gave our SOAR Scholarship Recipients a second photography exercise to prepare them for summer shooting.  I asked them to each build their own Barbie-Sized Studio to familiarize themselves more with the direction of light.  You may be wondering what a Barbie Studio has to do with the summer sun.  The answer is EVERY THING.  By creating our own studio set up, we can experiment with where the light is coming from, identifying ALL the light sources (is it bouncing off the white board underneath our feet or being sucked up by the dark, green grass?).  What if we experimented with shifting our Barbie (in small increments) for different lighting results on her face, hair and background?

Before you lift up your camera this summer, first take a moment to pause and answer all that you can about the light surrounding you and your subject.  Recall this exercise.  Identify where the main light source is.  Think about how you can shift your subject to capture rim light, light their hair so it’s golden looking from the sun, or simply ensure that no one is squinting.

For more photo tips on lighting, check out the following posts;

12 Types of Magical Light for Photos

How to Find the BEST Light Indoors!

5 Keys to Get a Starburst Effect in Photos

Photo Tips for Dealing with Harsh Sun

If you do this exercise, post your studios on The Photo Mom Facebook page!  I would LOVE to see!

xoxo,

m