 Dolly L. Davis |
Problem with dark shadows in portraits I shot wedding portraits and the wedding in full direct sunlight starting at 1:30 pm. I have dark shadows, even though there was a reflector used and flash. I only had 9 days to learn how to do it. And, I have lots of images to fix. Is there a program that will fix them, or a way I can fix them? I have no idea what to do with them! Any suggestions would be wonderful! Thanks! Dolly
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Pete H |
Dolly, Can you post a example? Shadows (depending how deep they are) are rarely recoverable. You can bring them up, but at the expense of a lot of digital noise.
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William Schuette |
Dolly, what was the make of the camera and did you shoot jpeg or raw?
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Mark Feldstein |
Greetings Dolly. I couldn't even begin to tell you how to correct what you've shot. For that I'd surely defer to the wisdom and expertise of Pete and Will. However, I'll offer you some solutions to prevent the problem next time around. First, you need to consider the angle of the sun to your subject's position. 1:30 in the afternoon over the summer is nearly still directly overhead. That's a real problem especially illuminating the eye sockets, the areas beneath the eyes and the shadows that form below the nose. The easy solution is shoot at a time of day when the sun is less vertical to your subject or the light is more diffused, like on overcast days. Shooting at those times, you should be able to get by with a flash on a bracket with a diffuser of some kind, not too close and not too far from the subject working with "fill flash" at about 1/2 to 3/4 of a stop less exposure than your overall scene lighting. Using a reflector is ok but you need to see just HOW the light is reflecting onto your subjects. That's hard to do without modeling lights or an assistant to move the reflector around while you look at the subjects in the viewfinder. The problem with that too, is if you're trying to reflect sunlight at that hour, it's going to be at a pretty harsh angle. Remember angle of incidence (light striking the reflector) equals the angle of reflection (bounce). You'd need a pretty steep angle at that hour. Practice, practice, practice. Read articles about the nature and quality of light, how to use your camera or hand-held light meters effectively, and try to learn how to visualize how the shot will really look (from the viewfinder) before you shoot and then after you add light.
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Bob Cammarata |
Try decreasing the contrast. Do it gradually in steps and stop before the skin-tones look too flat and pastey. Then saturate a little to get back some of the color.
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