THE KEY TO CAPTURING EPIC PORTRAITS

There are so many things that you can do to make your portraits look epic. One thing that I found helpful during my progression through photography was learning about how to manage light. I feel like a common theme of photography is the lighting of the shot. You have to have everything at the ready to make sure the next portraits you’re going to take are going to be epic.

A common struggle that we experience when trying to photograph epic portraits outside is the lighting. If we set the exposure to best show the subject, the background becomes completely blown out. If we set the lighting for the background, the subject can barely be seen. The only way to compete with the natural light coming from the background is to use artificial light on your subject.

LIGHTING FOR EPIC PORTRAITS

In this epic portrait that I was able to capture at Grand Teton National Park, I used natural, reflected, and artificial light to illuminate my subject and the beautiful background. I used a golden reflector to bring some of the natural light back to the model’s clothes that were underexposed. I also used a speed light to brighten up her face. Using both of these helped my portraits look even more epic.

I loved these remaining portraits but they weren’t quite as epic. As previously discussed, the lighting can be a little difficult. Looking at the image above, we can see that it was well exposed for the background. The sky is blue and the peaks of the Tetons look amazing; however, the subject is way too underexposed. Moving to the next shot, I fixed the exposure on the model, but the sky and background are barely visible. They are far too blown out and overexposed. The only way to get that epic shot was to bring in the artificial light.

Overall, I am super happy with how this shot turned out. It was a little frustrating for a time, but once I finally found a balance in the light, I loved it. Go ahead and try this out for yourself.

FIND MORE

If you are interested in finding more Epic Portraits, look here.

You can find more of my Portrait Photography here.

As always, thank you so much for looking into my content. I hope that it could both interest and inspire you as you continue on in your own endeavors.