In this part of the session we moved outdoors to take advantage of the setting sun. I’m not a huge fan of sun flare photos but I think this one turned out nice. I haven’t shot many of these but you might be interested in how it was shot?

Since the sun was getting low in the horizon I noticed when I went to take a shot I had sun flare. As I mentioned in the opening, I’m not a huge fan of flare shots. It’s not really my style but I thought it might work in this particular setting. I liked the end results. As you can see in the image and the diagram the sun is behind Amber and it’s providing a nice rim light to hair and shoulders. Moving the camera around until I had a considerable amount of sun flare showing in the view finder is when I took the shot.

Lighting was provided by an Elinchrom 600rx strobe and I was using the Elinchrom 53″ octa to keep the light nice and soft. You can see in the catch light in her eyes, the light was positioned to camera left but not a lot… maybe off the center of the camera. The light was raised high enough to make sure the catch lights were in or around the 10 o’clock position. In a shot like this it’s really important to meter the background first, in camera or with a light meter. Right around F/5.6 was a good setting. I then increased the flash to about 1/3rd of a stop over the ambient light. This helps bring her to life in the image. I used the Canon 85L II lens to capture the shot.

Thank you for visiting the site and be sure to pass this information on.

Thanks again,

Frank

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Photography Lighting Diagram - Amber with Flare