Portrait outside

[Northy]

What do you think about portrait outside, without additional lightening? Only sunshine and clouds as a big softbox
I am using external flash sometimes, but it is not always the right choice.
What are your rules for this kind of portrait photography?

This is an example:

[SusanH1970]

Outdoors I use natural light exclusively...I've never even used fill flash. I do use a reflector if necessary. Other than the light being a bit flat, I think your photo is lovely.

[zona5101]

Hi and welcome.
Beautiful shot - looks like you don't need any rules

[-Garfield-]

If you want to know just the opinion I have for this than scroll all the way down and you'll find you answer. If you are interested a bit more about it than continue reading

Photographing people outside is great and as you wrote with cloudy weather the clouds become a huge softbox. But I try to use an extra flash. I don't have any reflectors so the flash is the only way how I can modify the light a bit.

Lets pretend that outside is cloudy, so there is a large softbox we'll be using as our main light. Outside I shoot with shallow depth of field so I don't need any kicker light at all because I'll shoot wide open at f/4 mostly. I set everything up and I take a picture. On the small screen everything is cool but when you get back to computer ... it looks like something is missing.

What am I talking about? Catch light! For me it is very important part of portraits and that little sparcle of light can really make that picture! For example check out these two shots.


With this shot I was talking so much I even put my flash to sleep and it didn't make that catch light. To be honest this portrait isn't so bad. The composition is OK, cropping is bad but the background is nice soft and that brings out the subject.

But check out this:

For this shot I used only ambient light and small pop-up flash set to -1 1/3 and it done more than well. I was just going for a little bit of fill light and especially that catch light in their eyes. People don't look "dead", well just for me maybe.

What I'm trying to say here is that outdoor portraits are great but I'll allways use fill flash or something to bring that catch light into the image.