Sunny / Not Sunny Beach Portraits

The title should have been “How To Add Pizazz to Your Natural Light Photos.”

Or something like that.  But the image has that fun slider feature that shows a “before and after” look.

How cool is that?

This particular “pose” is carefully setup with the intention of having that candid look.  There’s alot to talk about there, but this discussion is really going to focus in on the lighting.

The first thing to know is that these images were taken about a minute apart. Same location, same people.  We took the first shot, walked back and did it again. in this short minute, the sun had popped out from behind a cloud and changed everything.

Also important is the fact that this is a portrait. As beautiful as the background may be, the most important thing to expose for is the skin tone.  You’ll notice that the skin tones are very similar on bo the before and after images.

The only thing that changed was the shutter speed.  The original was about 1/333 of a second while the sunny version was 1/1333 of a second.

The sand, the ocean, the sky, well everything is much more vibrant. There are several reasons to like the first image, but most people chose the sunny version if give the option. It’s got “Pop.”

Sure, the cloudy phot can be photoshopped, filtered, twisted and turned in order to make it more interesting.  But it doesn’t take much before the photo just looks touched up.

It’s always better to get it right in the camera.

And it only takes another minute.