Location
This photo was taken at the Ulistac Natural Area in Santa Clara, California. It is around 40 acres of open space that showcases seven distinctive natural habitats. This land was originally used as a seasonal encampment for the Ohlone Indians (Ulistac was the name of an Ohlone chief). I chose a spot where the sun was peeking at a slight angle through the trees.
Time
This was taken at around 7:40pm around 30 mins before sunset (the golden hour)
Lighting
I wanted to light the image with the sun at the back to achieve a touch of magical glow around the model’s hair. There were several factors that contributed to capturing that magical light: 1. Location – open shade with the sun at the back peeking through the trees. 2. Time of the Day – 30 mins. before sunset. 3. Slight over exposure to compensate for the back lighting – I used manual exposure f 2.8, 1/80 sec, ISO 125. That gave me a shallow depth of field and good enough shutter speed to hand-hold.
Equipment
I shot this with my Canon 5D Mark II and 85mm 1.8 lens hand-held with no other light modifiers or reflectors. I would have liked to use a reflector to fill in the light on the model’s face but I didn’t have an assistant, so I had to adjust the tone curve in post-processing. I did use a WhiBal white balance card to adjust the color balance.
Inspiration
I was inspired by the fact that there are photographers making great images just by understanding the characteristics of natural light and how to use it without any fancy modifiers. So, I read some articles, saw some great images and decided to give it a try. I consider myself an advanced amateur photographer and this was my first time trying out this technique.
Editing
Needless to say, I shot in RAW. My post-processing consisted of adjusting white balance (the WhiBal card helped), exposure, tone curve and sharpness in lightroom. Finally, I did some skin softening, dodging and burning and some selective coloring in photoshop.
Learning
As I learned from my experience shooting this image, you don’t need fancy equipment to shoot something similar. The key is to get the lighting right with the location, time of day and exposure. Definitely plan for the location and shoot during the golden hour. There are plenty of great tutorials on the net that walk through the details of getting great backlit images – just go out there and practice it!