This is a follow up to Lisa’s excellent Quick Tips for Quick Portraits article where she showed how to create a portrait of AllEars.net founder, Deb Wills. The only thing I wish to add is many times we are taking these photos in bright Florida sun or in the shade where our favorite Disney characters like to hang out. When faced with those kind of conditions, I like to add fill light using either a flash unit or on-board camera flash (if the camera has it).
Unlike Lisa, I could not move the statuette of Dumbo and Timothy in the Hub area in front of Cinderella Castle where I had my subject pose for her portrait. This meant I needed to add light to “fill” in the shadows caused by the bright afternoon sun. Like Lisa suggests, I found a good background and, by kneeling down, I found an angle which kept out fellow vacationers, too.
A Disney Portrait in the Magic Kingdom.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/250s, f/16, ISO 200, EV +0.3, 27mm focal length
You can see the flash in my subject’s sunglasses. If she had not been wearing them, she probably would have been badly squinting so I didn’t ask her to remove them. I could remove the hot spot via software if I wanted to.
Fill Flash is one of the secrets of the Disney Photopass photographers. If you watch them, you’ll notice they always use fill flash during the day. Check your camera and/or flash manual to see how to set it/them for fill flash. It’s sometimes called balanced fill flash.
I have a question for the photographers; Can the heat and humidity in the Florida parks damage your SLR camera? If so, are there any steps which need to be taken to prevent this from happening?
Any help is appreciated!
And keep up the great work! The Blogs are awesome, as is the photography.
Jeff
Scott replies: Jeff, you have to watch out for condensation on the camera and lenses when going between extreme temperature changes. Hot and humid Florida weather to an air conditioned building is something to watch out for.
The best way to avoid condensation is to have a camera bag you can put your camera in. It should zip up. This will let your camera to slowly adjust to the new coolor or warmer environment. It takes anywhere up to an hour for the equipment to do so. A large zip lock bag will also work.
The danger is that the compensation will creep into your camera’s sensor area which might take a sensor cleaning once the condensation dissipates.
Good suggestions. I would also suggest that using a flash diffuser would help soften the fill light. If you can change the f/stop on your camera you could use a lower f/stop number to blur the background.
Scott replies: In this case, I wanted the castle to be in focus in the background which is why I used a small aperture. The Nikon’s have a way of using balanced fill flash which doesn’t overpower the subject. If I had used a diffuser, I would have had to use a manual setting which, for in the parks, can be too time consuming for family members. ;;-)
However, given time, I would have tried all your suggestions. Thank you for sharing them.