Shooting a multi-racial family

[StunGunAshley]

I'm doing a family shoot for a co-worker this week. It will be my first family shoot, but one thing I'm a bit worried about is working with different skin tones. She was actually the one that brought it up stating that a lot of times, she comes out really white in photos and/or her husband ends up really dark. I had never given much thought to that. We'll be outside in a park or something.

Does anyone have any thoughts or tips on dealing with this issue?

Thanks!

[LMAshton]

I have no tips for you. Wish I did. I'm in the same boat both as a person taking photographs and as the person in the photographs.

[BigFuzzy]

This is all about knowing how to use light.

First, a couple of questions:
1. do you have flash?
if so, do you know how to use it and can you get it off-camera?
2. Outdoors, but do you have access to open shade?
3.Do you have a reflector and know how to use it?
4. Are we talking one black one white person or is the darker person more along the hispanic or asian side of things?

The point being is that unless you shoot in horrible lighting conditions, you can control how the light hits both subjects. I'm going to be overly simplistic because I don't know what you have or your lighting knowledge.
If you have flash you can put the flash on the side of the darker person (if they're side by side) and as the light falls off it'll light the lighter subject less = more even lighting (ie feathering the light).
If you only have a reflector, you can obviously reflect more light onto the darker subject.
In open shade, you can place the darker subject closer to the open light.
You can use a snoot or grid on your flash to focus the light on the darker person to even out the lighting conditions.

There's so much to say about this including how and were you meter.. but I'm just not sure how detailed to get.

[LMAshton]

BigFuzzy, thanks for your response - it helps. And it's so incredibly obvious that I'm wondering where my brain was.

In my case, it's white people (me and my family - glow in the dark pale) and Sri Lankans (Asians - my husband and his family). The husband's family aren't very dark, so I mostly can get things working, but better light control would make it so much better.

I don't yet have an external flash/reflectors/etc., but that's just a matter of time and location. Thanks for the direction.

[StunGunAshley]

Thanks for your response BigFuzzy. That does help. I just have an on camera flash and no reflectors. I just do this as a hobby right now and my co worker said she'd be happy if they just got one decent picture. I have more faith than that in myself, but its not like I'm dealing with a mom-zilla or anything.

She is white, and he is a fairly dark black, with 2 beautiful 'mixed' children. We'll be at a park that has mountain and lake views, walking paths with wooden fences, tall weedy grass, and green grass fields, a gazebo and playground. I'm not sure what the tree/shade situation will be. We're meeting at 3pm, with sunset @ 430pm, we should have pretty good light.

Without having access to off camera flashes or reflectors, the main thing that I do have control over is the metering. I use my in camera meter, should I meter off of his face?

This is probably my most challenging shoot yet, and my first one with people that I don't know all that well, and the first one with older children.

Thanks for your advice.