Backlit or Backlighting Photography Tips for Portraiture

© 2013 Wazari Wazir | Backlighting Photography Tips | Canon 5D Mark II | 50mm | ISO 160 | 1/1000 | f/2

I’ve written a lot of backlighting photography tips, you can check my previous post regarding on camera metering to get the best exposure for your subject. In this blog post I just wanted to share a simple tips that is suitable for portrait photography in backlit situation.

As the name suggest, backlit or backlighting refer to the light coming behind your subject, in this case, behind the person you’re photographing. Normally you the photographer are facing the sun and the sun is behind your subject or the person you photograph. When it comes to backlighting, the light source does  not necessarily comes from the sun, it can also coming from the strobes or any light source as long as it is coming from behind your subject, it is considered as a backlighting.

If you are photographing a person outdoors with the sun as your main light, then be sure to position your subject carefully, if you wanted a nice solid rim light around your subject face, then be sure not to blend the person head with the white sky, otherwise the result will not be so good. You can refer to my son photograph (the top), where his top  hair is blended slightly with the white sky and the rim light can’t be seen clearly.

To get the best result make sure that the head or the hair is not blend with the sky or any white object behind, to really get the rim light, position your subject head against a little bit dark background or you can photograph from a higher angle so that the head does not blend with the sky.

For the second photograph, I chose to photograph my son from a little bit high angle and eliminate the white sky, so that I will have a nice rounded rim light all over my son hair. To be honest I really don’t like my son’s expression on the second photograph, I prefer the first one (top) for a nice expression but I just wanted to show you how with a little bit of changes in composition you can make it better.

Another thing is, the best time to shoot with  backlighting is one hour before the sunset or one hour after the sunrise. The lighting at that time is at its best when the weather is good. The key point is when the sun is  lower in the sky.