My experiences and tips on how to shoot backlit portraits

While I like most styles of photography, photographing people is what I like best. The downside is that you need a model, and most people I know don’t really like their photographs being taken. However, when they do, I like to plan my photoshoot thoroughly, so that I get the best results out of the precious time ;). This time, I will explain how I photograph backlit portraits.

This picture was shot with the sun illuminating the model from behind. By having the sun just outside the frame, you can prevent the colors from being washed out. The light from behind helps to create this beautiful rim light, especially visible in the hair.

Backlit photography means that you shoot a person or any other subject with the (sun)light behind them. If you don't know what you are doing, this often creates silhouettes (which can be great, but is not always what you want), but you can also use it to create a rim light around your subject and create a romantic atmosphere in your pictures.

Natural light

Most of the time shooting outdoors, I shoot using natural light. When shooting backlit, this is harder than usual, for the photo easily appears washed out. To solve this, you could use a flash to illuminate the subject. However, when you don’t have this with you, or don’t want to use this, not all is lost. Here is how I shoot all natural light backlit portraits.

Shooting into the sun

The first thing you should know when photographing very bright lights (like the sun) is how you should set your camera. The easiest mode to control how bright a photo will be, is the manual mode. If you are not used to using this mode, this might be a bit scary. However, once you learn the ins and outs of the manual mode, you’ll never want to go back to shooting in automated modes (the P/S/A/Av/Tv modes)!

By positioning the sun into the frame, a lens flare was created. This effect can be beautiful, but be careful that your model's face is not overshadowed (overilluminated? :P) by the lensflare. Also, make sure that the exposure is set for the model, and not for the background.

Luckily, the cameras nowadays have improved greatly and are able to help you when photographing in the manual mode. Every camera has a light meter built in.

Have you ever seen this bar in your camera interface? What it does, is that it tells you how bright your final photo will be. That’s right, with this bar, you can prevent your camera from over or under exposing even when in manual mode! You should adjust your settings in such a way, that the indicator is positioned at zero. This way, you will never get an over- or underexposed picture. More on how exactly this indicator works will follow in another post, but for now this is all you need to know. So, When you point your camera towards your model, you want the indicator to point to zero when in manual mode.

Now you can shoot the photo that you want, and it won’t be helplessly overexposed. :)

Another model posing with a tree :p. I had a hard time exposing for the model. In this case, a flash might have helped to illuminate the model more :). However, now the look is really soft, so it depends on what effect you want to achieve

Focusing

Another thing to overcome when shooting backlit, is when you use autofocus, the camera can get confused and not be able to focus. There are two ways to solve this:

• You can focus while hiding behind a tree or another object, so that the camera does not ‘see’ the sun directly. The downside is that the distance between the subject when hiding and when not hiding can differ, resulting in almost sharp pictures. That is a no go, so be careful :).
• You can focus manually. This can be hard when using extremely shallow depths of fields.

Try out which one works best for you. Sometimes, the camera will be able to focus anyway, so try that first ;).

What are your experiences and best practices when shooting backlit portraits? Have you ever tried it before? Let me know!