Beach Portraits - Tips Needed

[Digitalmemories]

Found it a challenging environment to take portrait photos. The light in the swimsuit shots was harsh, bad timing on my part as it was around mid-day, but wind, waves and other people in the background added challenges to what was a fun, but not very successful, casual photo session on the beach.

I just took one lens to avoid lens swaps in a sandy environment - 60mm f2.4 on a Fuji crop sensor. The evening shot was a 55-200 Zoom plus on camera flash on the same Fuji X-E2.

Would appreciate tips on how to take good photos in such a harsh environment? Also tips on posing - but not too sexy due to Asian girl modesty.

1. f2.4 1/5000


2. f5.6 1/1400


3. f2.4 1/5000

4. f7.1 1/600
5. f3.5, zoom lens, on camera flash, evening

 

[juggler]

In hard light look really carefully at where the light is coming from. A good starting point is to have the entire face in shadow and expose for that, letting everything else blow, or have the entire face lit. You've got a lot of half-and-half pics.

Lying down poses usually work better side on - the limbs get foreshortened when shot from the front.

Alternatively - get a scrim, e.g. the inner panel from a 5-in-1 reflector.

 

[ancient_mariner]

I can't add anything to Jugglers comments about lighting and exposure, however the first thing I noticed was that the camera has mostly missed focus on her face, instead picking up the strong pattern in the swimming costume around her breasts except in the last image, where the plane of focus appears level with the watch. This is really make or break for portraits - for me anyway - since my eyes will tend to settle where the image is sharpest, and generally that should be the face. If focusing is a problem, in shots where the scenery is not to disctracting like these, you can afford to have greater depth of field and stop down a bit more to ensure a sharp image where it needs to be.

HTH

 

[Digitalmemories]

I can't add anything to Jugglers comments about lighting and exposure, however the first thing I noticed was that the camera has mostly missed focus on her face, instead picking up the strong pattern in the swimming costume around her breasts except in the last image, where the plane of focus appears level with the watch. This is really make or break for portraits - for me anyway - since my eyes will tend to settle where the image is sharpest, and generally that should be the face. If focusing is a problem, in shots where the scenery is not to disctracting like these, you can afford to have greater depth of field and stop down a bit more to ensure a sharp image where it needs to be.

HTH

Yes, good suggestion about a smaller aperture, as I suppose the background can be in focus when it's a seascape.

I also used continuous focus for some of these, and I think this switches off phase detect focus on a Fuji? Perhaps the contrast detect focus was fooled by the stripes on her costume, as the focus point was on her face?

I do struggle with focus sometimes with the Fuji XE-2, and hear the latest XT-2 and 20 are much better. Think I should use manual focus more, plus a smaller aperture where possible.

 

[Phrasemaker]

Yes, good suggestion about a smaller aperture, as I suppose the background can be in focus when it's a seascape.

+1

The beach can be a great backdrop which adds to some shots and if you're going to blur it out as a default approach you might as well shoot in front of a poster of an image which looks vaguely wet. Plus you have some slack in respect of focusing on your main subject.

With the subject in your shots you're going to need to shoot a heap of images to get some degree of control in respect of skin tone and exposure, I've photographed similar skin tones many times and know it takes a fair bit of practice to get acceptable results unless you want to just add a heap of layers during processing to even things out. As has been said already make use of light direction and work with it, head shots are way easier to grasp exposure wise, and as you add more of the subject you will have many additional angles with light coming off at varying levels to deal with.

Also think about metering zones and how they might work with and against you when choosing them.