As a photographer, I used to shy away from shooting in harsh midday light. If you have ever scheduled a professional session, you may have heard that "golden hour" is best. Well, golden hour is definitely softest and yes, still prettiest, but since Lucy came along, I have grown to love ALL light as long as we are having fun and the moments are real. Sitting at home during quarantine, I bet a lot of you are taking even more images of your kids than you usually do and maybe even taking out the "big" camera again. I have quite a few mommy clients who have VERY nice cameras and I hope they getting put to good use during this prolonged period of family time!
You know the age old dilemma of taking pictures of your kids in harsh light. If you face your kids toward the sun, their faces get squinty and squinchy. If you face them away from the sun, their faces are in shadow. So what is a photographer to do? Find a beautiful natural reflector, that's what!
I took some images of Lucy planting a garden yesterday and while this post was originally supposed to be about that, I thought I would hop onto the blog and tell you WHY these images look as good as they do, even though we were planting at 1pm on an 80 degree day!
The simple answer is: our patio is a natural reflector. A natural reflector is anything that is a neutral color and can bounce that light back at your children so their faces and bodies are evenly lit. Always look for something neutral so that your children's skin tones look true to life. Sidewalks, Sand, boardwalks, and white walls are all great examples of nuetral natural reflectors (say that 10 times fast!). So go ahead, try putting your kids back to the light with a natural reflector in front of them and see how it goes!
Take a look below to see how our patio AND the raised garden bed kept Lucy's skin creamy and her face evenly lit even though the sun was BEATING down on us.
Hope this post helps! Drop a comment if you have a question or tag me on IG if you try it out!
xo,
J
