Anastasia Aranovich Photography - Successful Midday Photo Session in Full Sun

To explain how I got in a situation of having to do a photo session in full sun in midday I have to start at the beginning! Our long time friends from Seattle were passing through Boston a couple of weeks ago. They were on the way to the airport to fly back to Seattle and stopped in our house for a few hours. We were given only 4 hours to eat lunch, to have some quality conversation and do a photo shoot for their high school daughter. She is not quite a senior yet, but mom really wanted to get some fresh photos of her. All of this was in the middle of the day and while it is a perfect time for lunch and conversation, it is not an ideal time for outdoor photos, especially on a sunny day.

So, what are you going to do in that case? I decided to grab a pink tulle dress from the studio and drive my high school girl and her mom to a nearby lake in hopes to find a place with some shade. An open shade is typically a good place to hide from the midday sun, but there are other things you can do to improve the lighting, especially if you have a mom who is willing to walk around with a small beauty dish and exercise her arms!

And this is exactly what we did. I used the dappled sun that was coming through the leaves in my favor and balanced the shadows and the green color cast with the flash, still maintaining the natural look of the light, which is how I like my photos to be most of the time. It was also great having mom walk around with a beauty dish, because I didn't have to move the light. All I had to do is to instruct her on where to point it and how far to stand, which saved us the limited time that we had.

I have to say in the end that we all had fun, people around us had fun as well, observing the process. The photos turned out looking very refreshing to me, because I often shoot at the golden hour, really close to the sunset and rely on the natural light outdoors. In this case we were able to still use the available light, but enhanced it with the portable fill flash. So, bottom line: knowing how to use your flash outdoors is really helpful to expand the capabilities of your craft and give you more time during the day for photo sessions.

girl in pink dress smilinggirl in pink dress standing on a boatgirl in pink dress twirlingportrait of a girl in black and whitegirl in pink dress twirlinggirl in pink dress sitting on a boatgirl in a pink dress smiling

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