How to Take Portraits in the Sun

You may remember me writing a short blog post last December called, "How to Take Pictures in the Snow". I received a lot of good feedback from people for that post so I thought I would do another quick tutorial on how to use your simple point and shoot camera--this time for portraits in the sun.

If you go back through the outdoor portraits you've taken on sunny days, you'll probably notice

that in some of them the subject's faces are very dark, but the background is exposed properly, like in this photo of Mindy to the right. That's a problem because the whole point of the photo was to

show the people! You probably didn't even notice it before, but now it's going to bug you every time you see it. :)

There are many ways to solve this problem, but in the name of simplicity I am going to show you one solution now and some others at later dates. Here goes:

1) Review your image and check to see if the faces are darker than you would like.

2) If the faces are too dark, find the button that looks something like "+/-". It is called exposure

compensation and it might be a button on your camera, but it is likely a menu item you need to

find. When you have found the "+/-" button, move the marker from 0 to +2. (If +2 is too bright, knock it down until the face is exposed correctly).

Boring Details:

You may have noticed, if you are a careful reader that the solution for portraits in the sun is exactly the same as the solution for pictures in the snow! The reason is that our cameras aren't quite smart enough to know how to expose everything in every situation properly and there are a few situations that will routinely trick your camera into underexposing your image.

In this case, the camera was looking at the big picture and saw that the majority of this picture included very bright objects behind Mindy. So it did the best job it could to properly expose as much of the picture as it could.

Keep in mind every situation is different, so just experiment with your exposure until you get something that looks okay to you. As a matter of fact, in the final image of Mindy, I didn't move the marker to "+2" like I recommend in the tutorial. I only moved it to +1 2/3, because proper exposure it not about the numbers, but about what looks good to the photographer!

If you look at your old pictures again... (you know, the one's with underexposed faces), you will notice that they are probably all on sunny days when the sun is BEHIND your subject. You've probably heard the rule of thumb to keep the sun over your shoulder when you are taking pictures. In other words, keep the sun IN FRONT of your subject. That will certainly eliminate this problem of underexposing your subject, but it can create problems of it's own: squinting, boring flat light.

As a general rule (that I break all the time), when I am shooting portraits in the sun, I keep the sun behind my subjects and just expose for their faces. Yes, I blow out (overexpose) the background to a degree, but I like that look, so I am okay with the trade off.

26.2 (x2)

Mindy finished her second marathon yesterday and I couldn't be more proud of her. It was the Seattle Rock and Roll. She and 25,000 others ran from Tukwilla to Quest Field in Seattle passing a different band every mile. Mindy also had a PR (Personal Record, for those of you not married to track stars). Most impressive, though, was how she finished the race. She said in the last five miles or so she passed about 200 people {edit: after checking her posted scores online it looks like it might have been closer to 500 people} and was passed by only two. She was also in really great condition after the race, smiling, up for walking around, and just really positive. WAY TO GO MINDY!

If that isn't enough, after we got cleaned up we met my brother Trevor and some of his friends and walked up and down Greenwood at a car show... and after that played literally about 10 games of volleyball. Probably the most impressive feat of the day, though, was when Mindy walked the 20 feet from the car to the house after sitting in the car for two hours and letting her legs stiffen up. And yes, she is tired today but doing great. She's up and walking around and still feeling really positive about her race.

Since this is a photography blog, I should mention that the following pictures were grabbed with our point and shoot camera and not edited in any way.

I helped at a water station during the Marathon so I could at least see Mindy once. This is me running alongside her at mile 9 (my water station).


But enough about Mindy. My life that morning consisted of sticking my left arm out as far as I could and shouting, "Cytomax!" and hoping that a gentle runner would be the one to remove the cup from my hand (as opposed to a violent runner who would spill half the sticky contents of the cup on me as they tore it away).


I managed to leave my station a bit early and get a ride to the finish line to see Mindy cross. After craning my neck and scanning every face coming my way for about 40 minutes, I managed to somehow miss Mindy coming up on me at the finish line, so the best picture I have of her is this one. She's in the blue, and about to pass two more runners. :)


This is her right after crossing the finish line. She looks like she's ready for another one!