Master Outdoor Portraits

Discover how to capture studio quality portraits in the harsh summer sun with minimal equipment

- Tom Calton

Summer is the time of year when portrait photographers come out of their studio hibernation and venture out into the world to take advantage of the warmer climate. Not only do the vastly improved weather conditions allow the flexibility of being able to shoot in a variety of different locations, but also the colourful blooms that light up the countryside are an easy but effective way to inject bags of colour into your portraiture.

The summer sun comes with its challenges, though. Most notably you'll need to be considerate of the harsh, direct sunlight that is created by a cloudless sky. If not tamed correctly, harsh, direct lighting will create hard shadows across your subject's face, which won't look flattering at all. One alternative is to shoot with the sunlight behind the model, also known as backlighting. This too has its problems, the main one being that you are then forced to shoot towards the sun, which limits the direction in which you can shoot.

Perhaps then, a more practical solution is to work with the light, rather than against it? And thankfully, in this guide, we're going to show you how to do exactly that.

What you'll need

• DSLR or mirrorless camera
• A bright, sunny day
• A large white diffuser
• A boomstand or an assistant
• Adobe Lightroom

The final image

After applying a few simple colour adjustments and performing some easy retouching techniques in Lightroom, our portrait image is now bursting with colour and ready to show off

Shooting steps