Wow! I'm so blessed to read all of your comments on my last post! God is awesome!

I'm going to be very busy this week since I'm starting my 4-day Intensive here in Newport Beach tomorrow. I will do my best to continue posting throughout the week but I know how I get caught up in the excitement and tend to drop everything until Friday when I do these workshops.

Lately I have been getting a lot of inquiries from photographers asking me for tips on lighting. I'll start with the engagement session and then move on to the wedding in my next post.

Here's what I do at my engagement sessions:
I like to keep my gear simple since usually there is not much time to kill during an engagement session. I bring my entire camera case but I leave it in my car and just carry one camera, a couple extra 4GB cards, and one lens, no flash. Depending on where I'm going I will either bring my 70-200mm f2.8 AF-S VR or my fixed 200mm f2.0 AF-S VR. My lens of choice is the 200mm fixed but there's not always enough space to shoot with it unless I'm shooting in a big open area (e.g. beach, regional park, wide streets with not many pedestrians). I shoot at wide open apertures to maximize the contrast of sharp focus on my subject to the completely blurred out backgrounds. I love being able to control where the eyes travel when viewing an image using nothing but a fast lens. I also love the 3D look of the images and how the sharpness of my subjects causes them jump off of the print.

Using a fast lens (wide aperture) with only available light will only get you half way there unless you position yourself in relation to your light source and your subject in such a way that is flattering and interesting. My favorite position by far is putting myself on the shaded side of my subject turning my main light source (the sun) into a back light that creates a rim light around my subject that intensifies the seperation of my subject and the background. I like letting the sun hit the lens a bit for some lens flare but I usually do it for just a couple dozen images then lay off so it's not overkill.

Some things to keep in mind when shooting with the sun as a backlight:

• shoot in manual mode and expose for the shaded side of your subject
• use a hand held light meter and face the meter's bulb the same direction as your couples faces when getting your reading (pretend the meter is your subject and the white bulb is it's face)
  
• look for backgrounds that add a natural vignette around your subject to darken the edges of your image
• position yourself so that your background is not overpowering your subject - I like neutral backgrounds with texture that are not over-exposed
• educate your couples so they know what you're going for - tell them to keep the sun at their backs and not to let it wrap around their face
• shoot slightly off center so the sun is not creeping into your lens (unless you're going for lens flare as a stylistic thing)
• use a telephoto lens and lens hood to maximize saturation in your images - the more sun you let in your lens the more washed out the image will look
• make sure your white balance compensation is set for the shaded side so your couples faces look nice and warm - 6000 Kelvin is usually a safe setting unless there is sun bouncing back off a warm surface lighting their faces, then set it to 5200-5500K.
• remember, exposure and white balance are key in getting good results - nail your exposures!
  

Hope this helps some of you on your next shoot! Have fun and let me know how it goes!

Here are a couple backlit images I pulled from my site (one has lens flare, one doesn't)