How to backlight your images

If you’ve studied photography at all you’ve probably heard the term “golden hours”. The golden hours are an hour after sunrise and an hour before sunset. They are the ideal time to shoot outdoors because the sun is low in the sky. I spoke a little about backlighting here but wanted to iron it out for you as I want you to know how to backlight your images so that you can capture beautifully lit shots with your digital SLR when your lighting conditions aren’t perfect.

First, I position myself so that I am facing the sun. Therefore, my subject’s face will be fully shadowed as the sun will fall on his/her back. You want to make sure that there are no bright spots on the face as there are here on Ella’s arms and a portion of Hudson’s face. To remedy this I could have just taken the shot a few moments before while their faces were fully shadowed to create images that don’t look so harsh.

Backlighting is done in manual mode (don’t know how to shoot in manual mode quite yet? Consider taking our class or webinar). With my dial turned to “M” I then set my ISO low as I have plenty of available light (my ISO in these was 100). My aperture always stays at 2.8 so the only other thing I do is intentionally overexpose my image. Meaning, when I look through my viewfinder at my light meter I will move shutter dial until my “ticker”, usually, between 1 and 2.

I take a test shot, view the image, and adjust my shutter speed if need be. I may need to raise or lower my shutter depending if my subject is too dark or bright.

As we went from ride to ride at our state fair I made sure to position myself in that same location (facing the sun).

As the sun got low in the sky (and we hit the golden hour) I was able to change my angle to where MY back was toward the sun. This time of day is definitely easier to shoot but you don’t want to be restricted to only taking pictures an hour after sunrise and an hour before sunset.