One of the inevitable problems you come across with outdoor photography shoots is always going to be the weather. We're no strangers to rain in Newcastle, so when I booked in a couple to do a portrait session at the beach a few weeks ago, the weather was a gamble we would have to take.
Despite popular opinion, the best weather for portrait photos is not a bright, sunny day. The sun is a direct source of light that causes shadows, and when shooting in direct sunlight you have to use a flash to stop unflattering shadows on people's faces. And the other myth is that your subject should be looking into the sun (to avoid the above mentioned shadow problem), but that simply results in a lot of squinty-eyed, unflattering photos!
So when I arrived on location for the portrait session on the overcast winter's day I was delighted. The soft, diffused light that the clouds delivered was every photographer's dream. In fact, I think my clients got a bit sick of me commenting on just how lovely it was!
But even at the time I didn't realise just how perfect it would be. The water reflected the sky's luminous blue-gray like a mirror and I took advantage by taking shots at the water's edge where my subjects would be reflected nicely. But when I got home and loaded the photos for post-production I was astounded...the light was so perfect that the pictures almost looked fake!
Now don't get me wrong, I use Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom for post production (I shoot in Raw files so they have to be converted in some editing suite regardless), but I was almost disappointed when I realised that even though all I did to the picture was manually select some settings and convert the picture to JPG, that it was so luminous and vibrant that people could assume that it was indeed fake or heavily edited.
My photography teacher's mantra was that "you're better to capture the photo as close to how you want it first, rather than try to make it something artificial later." And I agree. Although it's great that when someone walks into the background of your photo you can remove them in Photoshop, it's almost a shame that we dare not believe that when we see beautiful photos, it was as simple as capturing something that was that beautiful and perfect to begin with; no Photoshop required.
