How To Take Night Portraits With Flash
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How to take night portraits with flash. Flash photography at night can be fun and creative. As long as you dont have moving subjects this mode is the safest way to take nighttime photos. At night its going to be much harder for your camera to see your subject and focus.
In this article wedding photographer and my co-instructor for the new course Portrait Lighting on Location shows you how to create a dramatic night portrait using off-camera flash balanced with the ambient or natural light. But there are a few tricks to get beautiful soft light perfect for portraiture without lugging around anything other than your camera. There are lots of reasons to want to take photos without a flashoften the flash overpowers the image or your subject may be too far away for the flash to do any good.
Nighttime photography is already very challenging but its even more so if you want to take photographs without a flash. Night portrait photography is an opportunity to experiment and create unique photos but its crucial to be prepared and know how to set your camera correctly to take advantage of the low light conditions instead of being limited by it. You need your own lighting sources to evenly light the model otherwise youre going to end up with harsh shadows and dark faces.
If you are looking to wow your photographic audience night portraits are the way to do it. Ive included a few photos from my portrait sessions at night as well as a coupl. In this photo I used a cheap 80 flash a 10 shoot-through umbrella and a 20 flash trigger.
Aim your flash at the subject and set it to low power such as 132 or 116. If the subject is too bright turn the flash power down. Check out how I like to photograph night portraits during this easy flash photography tutorial with my pr.
Shooting portraits at night usually requires a lot of gear. This is just one example of how you can take beautiful portraits at night. Also when you need to fill in light say during sunset or compete with afternoon lighting using a flash can help you get better exposure from frame-to-frame during your sessions.