Winter Portraits: Shooting in Low Light, Rain and Snow

1. Introduction: Photography is the art of capturing light. But what happens when you're lighting conditions aren't ideal? You can't always wait for the perfect moment to capture a photo, and you might not always have access to professional lighting equipment. But with a solid understanding of the manual settings of your camera, you're able to adapt to any lighting condition. Shooting winter portraits is a great way to enhance your photography skills. Hi, I'm Sophia and I am a fashion photographer in the UK. I have worked with clients across fashion, across music and more commercial genres from clients such as Leon Pinot, Reebok, to Panasonic, to name just but a few. My work is deeply rooted within environmental portrait shot. Mostly preferring to shoot my subjects outside of the studio due to both the diversity of working location, and also the element of problem-solving that it can entail. Taking portraits in and environmental setting gives you as the photographer added elements to play around with. Often creating more interesting and creative compositions. However, many locations are outdoors, they're in public spaces. We can't always adjust those surroundings to make our job easier. Instead, we have to adjust the things that we can control, our camera settings, our work flow, and our use of the available light and environment around us. In this class, we're going to be exploring the intricacies of shooting portraits in the winter. From learning about the appropriate camera settings for low light, rain and snow, to understanding how to create a workflow that works best in the winter months. This class is perfect for beginners. If you are new to photography, you don't really understand how manual mode works or even if you are a more seasoned photographer that just hasn't had the opportunity to shoot much outdoors or in the winter time, then this class is for you. Equally if you're not a photographer at all, but you just want to get some great photos of your friends, your family in the winter for the holiday season, then you're definitely also be able to use this class to help you out. For your class project, you're going to create a striking winter wonderland portrait regardless of the outdoor challenges that you might face. By the end of this class, you'll not only have a better understanding of the technical elements of photography, but you'll also be able to design your workflow based on the lighting and weather conditions, as well as deal with common issues that might arise when it comes to editing your winter portraits. Mastering low-light photography and photography in difficult weather conditions is bound to make you a better and more comfortable photographer regardless of the situation that you find yourself in. Let's grab our cameras and get started. 2. Class Project: Thank you guys so much for taking the time to enroll in this class. I can't wait to get stuck in and help you sort out those little intricacies that come with sheeting in the winter time. For the class projects, I'm asking you guys to take a photo, a portrait, photographed outdoors using just your available lights. Bonus points if you can shoot your portrait using manual mode. The portrait can be utilizing the harshness of a winter sun, it can be in a heavy downpour rain, it could be if you're lucky enough to have snow this winter then in the winter wonderland that you might have in your back garden. The exact environment, the exact conditions that you shoot the portrait in don't matter too much in this project because the whole idea is about being able to adapt and overcome any challenges that you're faced with when you step outside and you see what kind of lighting or weather conditions you are dealing with on that day. Keep the class project in mind throughout the class and then once you're ready to, you can submit the class projects in our little section. But without saying much more, let's get straight into the class and join me in the next lesson where we're going to be talking about the actual challenges of shooting in the winter time. 3. Identifying the Challenges of Winter Light & Weather: Natural light, regardless of the season, can be challenging. It's constantly challenging and you're constantly having to adapt. It's one of the trials, but also the thrills of shooting in an environment that you can't completely control. In this lesson, we're going to be identifying what some of those issues that you might run into when shooting in the winter time are, from the low winter sun to the sun only appearing for 1-2 hours. The challenge is that winter lights pose can be challenging for a variety of different reasons. People often underestimate how much light they have to work with and for how long, and also don't take into consideration the impact that the weather can cause during the winter months. To be fully prepared for any circumstance that you are posed with during the winter, some of the things that you might want to consider are cold weather to start with. Whilst this one may be a given, the cold weather can cause you all sorts of problems from uncomfortable working conditions for you and your model to malfunctioning equipment. We've all heard of batteries that just stop working during winter months. This is definitely something you want to consider. We're going to go straight in with a fast step, and that is over-prepare with the equipment that you're bringing. If you can bring extra batteries, if you can bring extra SD cards, if you can even bring an extra camera, then that is going to set you in good stead just in case things get wet, things get cold, or any other eventualities that might happen because of the wintertime. Cold weather can also affect things such as the actual aesthetics of your photo. You don't want your model to look too cold. Sometimes skin color can change and go more pink or blue depending on their skin tone in cold weathers. You've also got things like chapped lips, dry skin, all of those things are things you want to try to avoid as you get into a shoot. Throughout this class, we will be talking about ways that we can avoid some of those things happening. Of course, alongside cold weather, especially if you live in the UK like I do, we have wet weather. Similarly, to cold weather, this can affect all sorts of things from your model to your equipment. You want to avoid your equipment getting wet, you want to avoid your model getting wet, you need to also consider your locations, is there space to go undercover if needs be? You need to make sure that there's a backup plan, if the weather is really wet and it creates a muddy path or it's cold and wet and creates ice, then maybe you can't use that location because it's a health hazard. Well, because you don't want your models get covered in mud. You need to have backup options. Thirdly, one of the biggest things about shooting in winter, one of the biggest challenges shooting in winter poses is the unpredictable lighting. In the winter, at least in the UK, it gets dark quickly. For me right now it's 5:00 PM, it's completely pitch black outside. In the winter in the UK, the sun sets as early as 3:30 some nights. Unpredictable lighting doesn't just start and end with it getting dark earlier. Even if you're already expecting it to get dark at 3:00, you might go out at midday, be expecting this bright sunshine just to be greeted with a really overcast day and no lights play around with it all. In this class we will be talking about how to deal with situations like that when you are dealing with overcast light, when the sun just can't break through the clouds. You're dealing with a lack of light even before the sun has set. Understanding how to shoot in low light and how to adapt when the lighting isn't perfect is essential in becoming a well-rounded and adaptable photographer. Over the next few lessons, we're going to be talking about how to adapt to these challenges if they do arise. Join me in the next lesson where we're going to be talking about your camera and your choices of a lens. [MUSIC] 4. Your Camera & Lens: When it comes to cameras and lenses, I am a firm believer that the best camera that you could possibly use is the one that you have available to you. That being said, in this lesson, we're going to be talking about the optimal equipment, the optimal cameras, and the optimal lenses when it comes to shooting portraits in the winter time. First up, let's talk camera bodies. Throughout this class, we're going to be discussing how you can shoot in manual mode. That is going to help us deal with the difficult lighting or weather conditions that we outlined in the previous lesson. In order to use manual mode and take advantage of the manual settings of a camera, you're going to need one that can be switched into manual mode. Most SLRs or DSLRs do have a setting to put your camera into manual and you can even download apps on your phone that override your phone settings and allow you to shoot in manual on your phone. To be honest, having a camera that shoots in manual is the most important aspect here when we're talking about it in the context of this class. But if you really want to push the boat out and investing in a mirrorless camera is a great investment, especially if you're going to be shooting in low light situations often. The reason for that is that mirrorless cameras generally have a larger sensor and those sensors will allow for better performance when you have low light. Moving onto lenses, one of the most important things when it comes to picking your lens is opting for a fast lens. A fast lens refers to the minimum f-stop that a lens have. We're going to be explaining a lot more about f-stop in the next lesson, but for the purpose of just searching for your lenses, the f-stop is generally the number that the lens has on it on the name of the lens and it usually reads F/S before or after the number. For example, 35-millimeter 1.4 F/S has an f-stop of 1.4. That lens is faster than a lens that has maybe an f-stop of 2.8. If a lens has an f-stop of a smaller number, that means it's a faster lens. Join me in the next lesson where I'm going to be talking a little bit more about f-stop and a bit more about why having a small f-stop number will help you out in low light situations. 5. Manual Settings: Exposure Triangle: In this lesson, we're going to be exploring a concept called the exposure triangle. As simply put, the exposure triangle consists of three elements that are going to help you find the correct exposure within your image. An exposure is how evenly lit or exposed your image is. If an image is too dark, we say it's underexposed. If an image is too bright, we say it's overexposed. If an image is just right, then we say it's correctly exposed. When we're talking about exposure, we deal with it in metrics of stops so maybe one stop overexposed or one-stop underexposed. If you are shooting on a digital camera, you should have a little exposure line through your viewfinder that indicates whether or not your image is correctly exposed or not. Of course not everything has to be so technical, you can't just expose by eye, especially with digital photography if it looks well exposed, then it probably is, and you're good to go. You might be wondering why we shoot in manual when nowadays in most cameras have the opportunity to shoot in automatic, which automatically set your exposure, your shutter speed, your ISO, and your aperture for you. Shooting in manual really does give you a lot more control over your image. However you imagine it in your head, you're able to capture an image in that way because you have a full and better understanding of your camera and the way it works. Similarly, if you can shoot manual, you can shoot anything so whatever is thrown at you in whichever situation, whatever job, you can use your understanding of the exposure triangle and how to shoot manual to solve these problems. That is especially important when we are dealing with situations such as winter and low light. As I briefly mentioned before, the exposure triangle consists of three elements. Your ISO, your shutter speed, and your aperture. Starting with shutter speed, shutter speed refers to the length of time that your shutter is open for. We work in metrics of seconds and a fractions of seconds. For example, if your shutter speed is 1/400 or 1/400th, that means that your shatter will be open for 1/400 of a second while you're taking the image. If however your shutter speed reads one, then that means one second so your shutter will be open for one second. When we say a faster shutter speed, it freezes motion. If you're working in sport, for example, and you've got someone running past you, you don't want your subject to be blurry as they move past you so you set a faster shutter speed which helps to freeze that motion in the frame. But because the shutter isn't open for very long as light is entering the camera and exposing your image because of this, your image is going to be darker. On the other hand, when you have a slower shutter speed, obviously you're going to be capturing that motion so if you wanted to do something like and we all get exposure, which essentially refers to having your shutter open for a longer period of time, then you're going to set your shutter speed to a longer time, such as one second and any motion or movement in your frame is going to blur. Because of this, you're going to want to consider using a tripod so you don't have the camera shake of holding it handheld and in some cases, if you're doing a really long exposure, you might want to get a cable release, which essentially pumps air into the shutter and triggers it that way. ISO historically refers to the sensitivity of your film. When we are talking about digital cameras, however, we are referring to the sensitivity of your sensor. With ISO, we work with whole numbers so it's definitely a lot easier to grasp than when we're using fractions and decimals and things like that, we're using whole numbers, usually in increments of about 100. When it comes to ISO, the lower the number, the less sensitive to light the sensor or the film is. We use lower numbers when there is plenty of light and we don't need the sensor or the film to be as sensitive, and we use higher numbers when we need that extra bit of sensitivity. The drawback of using those higher numbers in increasing the sensitivity is that you get more grain. How far you can push your camera, which whatever ISO you can put your camera to does depend on the model of camera and when you're shooting on film, you'll get a film that usually has a pre-determined ISO. Simply put, a higher ISO means more sensitivity, more light, but more grain. A lower ISO means less sensitivity, less light and less grain. The third and final element of the exposure triangle is aperture. Aperture refers to the little hole that's in your lens, and it opens and shuts to change how much light is entering the camera. We work in decimals when it comes to aperture, and we call those f-stops. You might have heard f-stop used when you're buying a camera lens. Camera lenses are generally named with their focal length followed by the widest aperture. For example, the lens I'm using today is a 35 millimeter F1.4 lens. That means that the focal length is 35 millimeters and the widest aperture is 1.4. When it comes to aperture and the numbers, it can feel as though it's working in the opposite way to how things like ISO work. That is because the smaller the number means the wider the aperture or the wider the hole in your lens. What this does is it lets more light into image, but it also decreases the depth of field. Essentially depth of field controls what is in focus. If you have a smaller depth of field then less will be in focus and if you have a wider depth of field the more will be in focus. For example, if I take a portrait with a lower number, so a wide aperture, that would mean that the depth of field will be shallower and the background will probably not be in focus. However, if I wanted the background to be in focus as well as the object, I'd increase the number so that the aperture gets narrower and so does the depth of field. But because I've done this, obviously the hole has gone a bit smaller and it's letting less light in so your image is going to be darker. This smaller the f-stop, the more light, but the less in focus. The larger the number, the less light, but the more in focus. As we can see, ISO, shutter speed and aperture will have their individual pros and cons, I guess. Because they each have their own drawbacks, it's important to use them in unison and use them so that they balance each other to create the perfect exposure whilst also meeting the needs of use of photography and the image that you're trying to create. If for example, we were taking a long exposure in the middle of the day, so there's plenty of light already and we open the shutter for, let's say a second, obviously a lot of light is going to be flooding into the camera within that second, but to capture the long exposure, we can't adjust the shutter speed and make it any faster. This is where we're going to be needing to adjust the ISO and the aperture to counteract that. On the other hand, if you want to take a portrait and you needed to reduce the grain in the image as much as possible, so you are going to use the lowest ISO you could, then you're going to have to use the shutter speed and the aperture to let more light into the camera. But essentially it's all a balancing that. You just want to play around and try and find a good midpoint. At this point in the class, I would recommend taking a little bit of a break from watching, head out with your camera and experiment. Take a few photos with different settings and then you can hopefully see how those different settings affect the image and affect the results that you get in. Before we finish this lesson, I will put up some photos on screen with the settings next to them, which will hopefully illustrate to you what those three elements actually do to an image. When you join me in the next lesson, we're going to be talking about working with your model and your whole workflow when it comes to shooting outdoors in the natural light during winter time. [MUSIC] 6. Your Model & Workflow: When it comes to portray photography, understanding how to use your camera and all of those technical aspects of photograph. Actually, the other half consists of working with people and organizing the logistics of your shoot. So in this lesson, we're going to be talking about working with your model and designing a workflow that are going to help you tackle some of those challenges we outlined in an earlier lesson. In the winter, it's arguable that designing a solid workflow for the day of the shoot is more important than any other time of the year. If you can get your workflow right, then you can always guarantee that your shoot is going to run a lot more smoothly. So what are some of the things that we can do to our workflow to assist our shoots in the wintertime? One of my best tips for shooting in the winter is to shoot earlier on in the day because it gets dark earlier on, at least here in the UK, you have less light to work with as the day goes on. To give yourself the best chance and the easiest time, shoot earlier on in the day. Then you have access to more available light during your shoot. Secondly, you're going to want to consider using locations that are undercover into the end of your shoot. This is mostly for two different reasons. Maybe most importantly, if it's raining or it's snowing, then you don't want to use the locations without cover first because your model is going to get down. They're going to get soaking wet before you even go into the full swing of the shoot. No, I mean, this is going to impact how they're going to look visually for the rest of the shoot. But it's also probably going to make them feel very uncomfortable, really cold. You don't want them to stock an ill or anything like that. But aside from the bad weather, another reason we want to avoid shooting undercover right at the end of the shoot, is because shooting undercover often restricts the amount of light you have. So you can imagine if I'm undercover, I've not got the light coming from above me. Depending on the location you're using, it might also be blocking light from other angles. Because of this, you're going to want to shoot undercover when you have the most available light. If you already don't have a lot of light and then you put your model undercover and you restrict your light even more, then you're going to have a lot more of a difficult time using what little light is left. When it comes to working with your model, there are also things that you might want to consider when it comes to their comfort. For example, it's often nice to bring your model towels, warm clothes, hand warmers, anything that's going to increase their comfort, especially if it's cold or wet. Aside from the models comfort, if your model is cold, it's also going to have a visual effect on the photos. Only were they likely look uncomfortable. But things like skin tone can be really affected by the cold. So you're going to want to make sure that model's hands or any extremities are really as warm as they possibly can be, because these are the first things that will change you as it gets colder. You also want to consider what kind of clothing they're wearing. For example, if I was wearing a light gray t-shirt and it starts to rain really heavily, you're going to see all of that rain on my t-shirt. Whereas, if I'm already wearing a dark color like black and then the rain falls onto a black top or jumper, then it's not going to be as evident as if your model was wearing a lighter color. Starting in that case is a really important element to your workflow. To recap, to make the most out of your available light, make sure you're starting your shoot earlier on in the day. Make sure that you are also saving locations that aren't undercover until the end of the shoot. Especially if you're working with bad weather. Of course, it's really optimal to make sure that your models are warm and dry. If you can bring hot drinks, if you can bring hand warmers, if you can bring towels, changes of outfits, all of those sort of things are going to not only make the shoot better, but going to make your relationship with your model a lot stronger because you're not putting them in a really uncomfortable situation. In the next lesson, we're going to be talking about the times of day and how that corresponds with the type of light. 7. Types of Light & Times of the Day: In the last lesson, we spoke about your workflow, when to do your shoot, when to best utilize the lights. But in this lesson, I want to talk a little bit more in detail about the types of light that you get on a typical day and when they are most likely to appear in the timescale of a day. Firstly, we're going to talk about something called direct light. Direct light usually happens when there aren't many clouds in the sky, it's quite a clear day, the sun's out. Usually, this is when the sun is at the highest point in the sky, so around midday, depending on where you live, it could be earlier, it could be later. Shooting in direct light is great in terms of the exposure to light, you get plenty of light in your image, which makes it a lot easier to adjust your settings. However, there are some drawbacks. For example, direct light can often cause a lot of heavy shadows. In portraiture, you're going to get these shadows often underneath the eyes, around the jaw, or anywhere where naturally light would fall on your face. For example, here you can see that I have direct light on this side of my face, and there is a shadow here that my hair is casting. Dealing with those shadows can be difficult, especially when it comes to nailing your exposure. As a general rule of thumb, if you're shooting with a digital camera, you want to expose for the highlights which are the brightest part of your image. This is because digital cameras find it easier to retain information in the shadows of an image. If you underexpose your shadows, then more information will be kept than if you overexposed your highlight. However, when it comes to film photography, it's the opposite way round. You want to expose your shadows because it presents more information in your highlights. You're going to want to overexpose those shadows to make sure that you're not losing detail in the shadows. When we're talking about exposing for highlights or shadows, that's essentially setting your exposure so that the highlights or the shadows are correctly exposed. Because it's very difficult to get an exposure with true harsh lighting where both the shadows and the highlights are both correctly exposed. However, there are things you can do about this, and one of those things is by using a reflector. You can buy reflectors which are essentially reflective surfaces that bounce the light into wherever you're bouncing it, so onto your model or onto your background, etc. You can also make your own. You can make your own with a whiteboard paper or some tin foil, anything that is going to reflect light back into the image. Alternatively, you can also use natural reflectors. By this, I mean if there are white walls nearby, or water in your location, anything that is naturally within the environment you're shooting in, that can reflect light. A great example of how easy it is to create a reflector is I have this packaging from a tethering cable and it's white, you can see. If you can see the shadow here that I've got on the edge of my jaw. When I lift the white cardboard to the edge, the light bounces off the cardboard and into that shadow, filling in. The shadow is there, the shadow is softer. That's what you really want to do. You just want to use a surface, any surface that is a light color that would bounce or reflect the light from that surface onto your subjects, and that will help you fill in some of those shadows. There are also other ways that you can avoid these harsh shadows, and that is by shooting backlight. Shooting backlight essentially means that you're shooting into the sun. Your subject is stood away from the light. That means the light is coming from behind them. Often you get this ring of light around your subject. Alternatively, you can shoot in the shadows, so in any shaded area. Shooting in shaded areas, essentially blocks that harsh light, so then you don't have to deal with all of those really harsh shadows. On the other hand, from direct light, you have overcast lighting, which generally occurs when you have a cloudy day. There's a lot of clouds in the sky that are acting almost as a natural soft box for the sun. This lighting can be great because it's really even, you don't have all of those were really harsh shadows. It can be useful to try and search for little bursts, little pockets of light to utilize to add an extra depth to your image. Because sometimes having really even lighting can make it look a little bit flat. Similarly, you can create directional light by using your surroundings, just as we did with using natural reflectors. Not only can we use natural reflectors like water or white walls or surfaces to add light to your images, you can also use things like trees or buildings that are casting shadow to add an extra shadow into your image. The next type of light we're going to be talking about is a time of day called blue hour. It's actually a time of day that occurs twice in a day. It generally refers to the time just before the sun is about to rise and just after the sun has set. During this time you get a bluish light. You also have considerably less light during this time, so it is important to keep that in mind. Similar to blue hour, you also have something called golden hour, which you might have already heard of. Golden hour is shortly after sunrise or shortly before sunset. If you imagine a timeline and you've got blue hour, sunrise golden hour, then you've got your daytime, then you've got golden hour, sunset, blue hour. Golden hour is what it sounds like. It is a lot of golden light. The sun is usually quite low at this time and it's giving off that really warm light. During golden hour, my favorite type of shooting is to shoot backlight, where you have that ring around your subjects. It can create quite an ethereal feeling. Golden hour is a beautiful time of day to shoot at, but it is quite difficult to capture. My personal recommendation would be try to end your shoot with golden hour and not have your whole entire shoot surrounding golden hour. Because if you miss that window or it's a really overcast day, then you're going to run out of light a lot quicker and you won't have time to do your shoot. I'd recommend starting to see a little bit before golden hour, get all the shots you need. Then if you can add golden hour onto the end of your shoot, then that's a bonus. Direct light, overcast light, blue hour, and golden hour are some of the most common types of light throughout a typical day. In the next lesson, we're going to be talking a bit more about the weather. We're going to be talking a little bit about how the weather and how the lighting affect your shoots, and how you can understand what that might look like prior to your shoot. 8. Understanding the Weather: In this lesson, we're going to be talking about how we can understand the weather, how we can track the weather, how we can turn ourselves into mini forecasters to really understand what the weather and what the lights do to shoots and how to deal with that. When we are considering the weather and the light, as photographers, we have to be really in chain with the weather forecast. Of course we're not mind readers and forecasts aren't always the accurate, but we want to be as prepared as possible. First and foremost, we're going to want to check the weather forecasts often and also use different providers. We know that weather forecasts aren't always that accurate. If you can check different providers, then you can have a more well-rounded overview of what the weather is potentially going to be looking like. In the UK, for me personally, I usually use a mix of Apple weather forecast and the Met Office weather forecast. Both of these apps usually read different things but I find that that could be quite useful because I then have an idea of all of the eventualities that are likely to happen on the shoots. The great thing about weather apps like these is not only do they tell you if it's going to rain or snow, they tell you the speed of the wind and they also tell you when the sun will rise and when the sun will set, which can be really useful in understanding your workflow and when you're going to be organizing your shoot. Not just understanding the rain and the snow and the light, by understanding strong winds, can be very important as well. Look out for any weather warnings or any sign of strong winds because of course, strong wind can cause equipment to fall over, can mess up your model's hair, clothing. You're going to want to have a clear idea of whether or not this is going to be happening, whether it's going to be a health hazard and you're going to need to call off the shoot or whether or not it's just going to be something you're going to need to adapt to. If it's something that you going to need to adopt to, you can get an assistant in to help you out with that added element of the wind. You can also organize your locations in locations that are not wind tunnels. It might have a wool up that blocks the direction of the wind and minimizes the effects of the wind on your shoot. Of course, weather isn't the only thing you'll want to consider. Understanding when the sun will rise and set is so instrumental. Like I said, you can use these forecasting apps to map that out and plan it. You need to know when blue hour is, when golden hour is, and how the weather might affect how much light you have on any given day. Things like lighting are almost easier to prepare for the weather because most days they are quite similar. You can prepare in advance. You might want to consider the general time that the sun rises and sets at that time of year. For example, in the summer in the UK, the sun can set as late as 8:00 or 9:00 P.M., but in the winter it could be as early as 3:00 or 4:00 P.M. You're also going to need to understand that there's a window of time before sun sets where you're going to have significantly less light. At the height of the winter in the UK that I know that the light quality begins to diminish usually around 2:00 P.M. It can also be really useful to actually visit your location prior to your shoot on similar time of day that you're going to be shooting, so you can have a good idea of where shadows fall, what the light might look like. You can take your camera, test the light so you're well-prepared for when the shoot actually comes around. It's also important to also expect an overcast day, like we spoke about when we were talking about the different types of lights. If you have an overcast day where the sun can't quite break through those clouds, you are going to have less light than maybe if it was a really sunny day. Making sure that you prepare all of this information beforehand just gives you a clearer overview of what you're actually going to be working with on the day. One of the biggest things about photography, especially when you're shooting on location with environmental portraits, with people in the mix that you can't just change everyone's schedules at the drop of a hat, is making sure that your preparation is on top form. Checking forecasts and understanding the weather and the light and what that's going to do to your shoot is really important in that preparation process. In the next lesson, we're going to be talking about how to shoot in snow and how to shoot in rain and how they differ from each other, including some of my top tip. Join me in the next lesson to talk about probably the two most common forms of weather during the winter. 9. Shooting in the Snow vs Rain: In the last lesson, we discussed how to preempt the weather. Checking your forecasts, understanding if it's going to snow, if it's going to rain, if it's going to be sunny. But what actually happens if it is going to snow or is going to rain? How do we deal with those situations? When it comes to shooting in the Snow, one of the things that you're going to want to think about most is how cold it's going to be. This is where it's going to be useful to have gloves for yourself. Feel model, to avoid those pink hands or to avoid your hands seizing up entirely. You're also going to want to ensure that your equipment doesn't get too cold and start working altogether. If you can bring spare batteries then that is really important when you're shooting in cold temperatures. You also might want to adapt your locations based on the weather. If it's really snowy, if it's icy, and your location isn't fit for taking your model or taking yourself even to that location. If it's going to be a health hazard, then you might want to consider changing at that location or having a backup vacation in mind, other than actually dealing with the cold weather and the logistics of shooting and cold weather when it snows, there can also be some visual effects to your image. Like we discussed in earlier lessons, you can use natural reflectors. Natural reflectors tend to be white or light surfaces that reflect the sunlight back into your image. What color is the snow? Of course, the snow is white. If you're shooting in the snow and you've got a lot of sunlight and you've got a ton of white snow around you, then that sunlight is going to reflect from the snow back into the image. You can use this to your advantage if you need that extra bit of light. But more than anything, it's just something to consider. You're going to make sure that you don't blow out your highlights. By that, you want to make sure that you're not overexposing your image too much. Especially if we're shooting on a digital camera. Like I said before, digital cameras can't save that much information in your highlights. It's important not to overexpose the image too much when you've got all of that added light being flooded into the image reflected from the snow. But what about if the snow is still falling? You're not just dealing with the aftermath of whether you're dealing with whether happening that and then dealing with falling snow or falling rain, very similar in terms of how you're gonna deal with it. First of all, you might want to consider using rain covers. This can be anything from an actual rank of it that you buy online, which tends to be a plastic sheet that you can put your hands in and hold the camera and the camera from within like a plastic cup off. Well, you might want to consider having an umbrella to hold your camera. Make sure it doesn't get too wet. Of course, you want to avoid your equipment getting wet when you can. Some lenses are weather-sealed, but it doesn't always mean that weatherproof, and just generally a good idea to try not to get your whole equipment too wet just in case. Of course, when it comes to location scouting for those undercover locations is a great idea to have a backup if the rain or snow is really heavy and you don't want your model to get too wet, like I spoken earlier lesson as well. You again want to avoid your model wearing really light-colored clothing because that is going to be ruined in the rain or the heavy snow. Similarly, you're going to want to consider how the rain or the model getting wet is going to change, the styling does add to the shoe. Is it something that you want to avoid? How is the hair going to respond to the weather? These sorts of things are probably things you want to consider before the shoot and if the answer is yes, it is going to ruin the shoot, then you're going to want to consider, again, undercover locations or changing your styling and hats, umbrellas, anything that's going to help your model stay dry. One of my favorite ways to shoot in the rain is to shoot backlit. What happens when you shoot backlit in the rain is you can get this nice ethereal look where the light goes through the rain, lights up the rain and you get this kind of like much a cool texture to your image when you're trying to capture that rainfall or snowfall and you want to freeze it in frame so that you can see it within your image. That's where you're going to be wanting to use a faster shutter speed, something like one over 600. If you can be shooting that fast, then that will hopefully, depending on the speed of the rainfall, that will hopefully freeze the droplets in the air and help out to that ethereal image. Those are just some of the tips for shooting in the rain and shooting in the snow. In the next lesson, we're going to be going through my recommendations on what to pack in your camera bag. 10. What to Pack in Your Camera Bag : Now, we've spoken about dealing with all these different types of weather, all of these different types of lighting that you might experience in the winter months. What do I recommend you pack in your camera bag? In the winter months, I recommend packing a mixture of things to help your model, help create that comfortable working environment, and help the logistics of the shoot. To start off, you're going to want a camera body that shoots in manual mode. You're going to want at least one lens, ideally a fast lens, one with a wider aperture, so you can let more light into the image. Some of my favorite lenses for portrait photography are the 35 millimeter, which is very similar to what your eye sees, so it's a great way to transition between what you're seeing in an image, and how you're taking the photo. I also love 50 millimeter lens, which is often referred to colloquially as the Nifty Fifty because it's such a cheap, great portrait lens. Similarly, you're going to want some extra batteries, and extra SD cards. If your batteries get cold and stop working, you're going to want backup ones to use, if they drain quicker because of the cold weather, then again, you'll want extra ones to use; in terms of SD cards, I've even dropped SD cards in puddles before. Having extra SD cards is always useful regardless of the circumstance, but definitely in winter time. Then you're going to want to think about bringing umbrellas in case it rains or it's snowing actively, to not only protect your equipment, but protect your model in-between the photos. You're going to want to think about bringing towels, again, to dry off your equipment, but also to dry off your model, and keep them warm. Spare outfits for models are a great idea, especially if one outfit gets wet, and you can't shoot in it anymore, or just because your model might want to change into something warmer to travel back home in. If you can get hand warmers, those little packs that you squeeze, and they activate the heat, those are great for in-between locations, in-between shots, for both you and the model to use. If you can't get a hand warmer, you can also consider just packing some spare gloves for you and your model. Then lastly, you might want to consider a rain cover for your camera, which helps to keep the rain out. Most of these are transparent, so you can still see what you're doing in your camera, which is always a great thing. In terms of actual camera bag, I like to take a backpack that has a rain cover over the top of it, because that helps to just make me feel as though there's that added safety measure. My stuff in my pack isn't going to get wet, and I can also keep it on my back whilst I'm shooting, so I didn't have to lay it down, and get the camera bag, and everything in it, damp whilst I'm shooting. Those are just some of my recommendations on what to fill your camera bag with, when you go out to take your winter portraits. At this point in the class, I think you're ready to head out and start taking your portraits. 11. Shooting on an Overcast Day: Behind the Scenes: I'm joined today by my lovely model Alex and we are going to be shooting some portraits. It is surprisingly, a lot warmer than I thought for the middle of December, and a lot drier than we expected, but it is quite foggy [inaudible]. [MUSIC] Throughout the shoot, I will be shooting with a range of different cameras. The main ones being the Mamiya RZ67 and the Fuji GA 605, both with a portrait 800 film. The 800 speed ISO will help me if we start to lose light. In terms of digital cameras, I'll be shooting on the Sony a7 III with a 35 millimeter 1.4 F stop lens. This fast lens means that I can shoot wide-open, allowing plenty of light into the camera if I need it. The 35 millimeter is also a great focal length for portrait photography, as things look quite similar through the lens as they do through your eyes. So it's quite easy to transition between looking at an image and capturing an image. The mirrorless body with the Sony a7 III, also means I can push the ISO higher if we start to run out of light. If you remember, I said that mirrorless cameras are great for low light situations because the sensor tends to be larger than other DSLRs, so you can push the ISO a little bit higher. Since we're shooting on a really overcast day, there isn't a lot of definition in the sky. One of the things we want to be mindful of is the fact that the sky is almost completely white, in places, it is completely white. It can be useful to try and add elements of the background and further away into shock. As we can see, because it is a little bit foggy, there is a natural separation between some of the elements at the background. For example, if there is trees in the background, that depth can be enhanced by the fact that it's quite foggy. You can further enhance this effect by using a wide aperture, which creates a shallower depth of field, and really hones in on this separation between the different background elements. The great thing about it being overcast is that we have really even lighting, which is really easy to use. We don't have to worry too much about balancing your exposure like we would in direct light. But because there are no elements of harsh light or shadow because the lights are even, we want to create directional light. In this shoot, I've used white rules to bounce light into the image and also used undercover areas to create shadows in places. [NOISE] Perfect. [inaudible]. I mean for now and then we'll do one away. [NOISE] Perfect and then looking away, [NOISE] I'll do this angle. Just come forward a little bit for me. Nice. [NOISE] Perfect, let me get the other camera. Nice. Cool, I'm going to get you maybe you see where this little hole is? Yeah. Can you sit in there, see what that looks like. Nice. [NOISE] Perfect. [NOISE] This one will be close-up. You should bring this hand up. Perfect. [NOISE] Cool. For the last idea, I want to see how quickly we can move Jonas and do another light long exposure if you spin in. Okay [inaudible]. Okay. Ready? Oh my God. [LAUGHTER] [MUSIC] In terms of the workflow for this shoot, it was important that we kept sitting on wet surfaces until the end, especially because Alex was wearing light-colored trousers. Like I said in another video, light color trousers can be an issue when shooting in the winter months because if they get damp or wet, then the damp patches show a lot more than if you're wearing dark colors. Because of this, we wanted to keep any sitting on wet surfaces and stuff until the very end of the shoot. We also made sure to plan our locations close to each other so that we could utilize the time before it got dark most effectively. With this shoot, we only had a couple of hours. So it's really important that we didn't spend too much time walking between locations. In the next lesson, we're going to be looking at a few shots from this shoot and a few shots from previous shoots that I've done, and going through some editing techniques, we can use on editing winter portraits. 12. Editing: Enhancing Your Photo: In this lesson, we're going to be exploring how to use tools in Adobe Lightroom to enhance your portraits at wintertime. If you're not already familiar with Adobe Lightroom, I'm going to link some resources in the class description for you to get to grips with the software as I'm not going to be going through the basics of the software in this lesson. We are going to be talking about how to brighten up your image, how to bring more life to the colors, how to remove things like raindrops from your model's faces, all those little bits that can be quite annoying when it comes to shooting in the winter and maybe you can't always fix when you are taking the photo. So we're going to be jumping straight in and go through some of the tools and techniques that I use when I'm shooting in the winter. So first up, we are going to be looking at how we brighten up an image. Often, when we are shooting in the winter, when we're shooting in low light, we're going to have an image that is maybe underexposed, maybe a little bit dull because there isn't that light that you'd be used to. In this image, what we're going to do is we're going to start by brightening up the image using our exposure here. As you can see that that does bring back a lot of detail. One of the important things when you're shooting any time, but in particular in the winter, is that you shoot in raw. Raw means that you are shooting in a format that saves more information, opposed to a JPEG which is compressed information. It's very flat. It doesn't save all that information that you can play around with in post. So as we can see, this image is still quite dull. What we're going to do now is we'll zoom in and have a look at which parts of the image need brightening up. Straight away, we can see that it's mostly the shadows that are being recovered by the exposure, and we've got the blacks quite high up as well so we can't really do much more here. If we bring up the exposure on the highlights, then you can see that this is brightening up the model's face. If we bring the whites up, we're seeing in this image that it's not really making much of a difference. I generally like to keep my whites quite flat. That's just my style. You can choose how you prefer to do it. The next thing I'm going to do is to try and brighten this image up and bring it a little bit more to life is I'm going to change the temperature. The temperature is pretty cold image right now. But if we start making it warmer, you can see how some life comes back into the image. Similarly, we can come down to the saturation. We can play around with bringing up certain elements. For example, this purple and red hue is dull. If you click this little circle here, and it allows you the option to go into image and select particular colors to move. If you can't identify by eye what color that is exactly, then you can just click and drag and change the saturation there. The reason we have all of these shadows on the model's face is because there isn't any light being shown on to the model. In this instance, it would have helped us if we had a reflector to be able to bounce that light into the shadows. Again, we can bring the exposure up again and even flatten those highlights to try and maintain some of that information. The next image we're going to look at is this image where we can see the model is backlit and it's a very overcast day, so it's been raining. We've got a few things we can do here. It being a very overcast day, we can see that the sky is almost completely blown out. So what we want to do there is balance it a little bit so that it doesn't look as contrasting to the model's head as it does. I will start by moving down my highlights, and my whites, and bringing back some detail here. Another thing we can do in this instance is using Dehaze. That just brings a little bit more life back into the subject of the image. Of course, we've also got these speckles of rain. One of the ways you could remove this if you found you wanted to would be by Spot Healing. Spot Healing is essentially where the software, such as Lightroom, detects all the pixels in the image, duplicates them, and creates a sense of mask for that part of the image. If we zoom right in, we can change the brush size here. Just select that bit of rain and it creates a duplicate of where to heal from. If I want it to be fine tuning this and duplicating it on his hair texture onto his face, then I just drag that bit to the hair. But of course, I'm just trying to duplicate his skin texture. We can do that across all of the different rain speckles that we want to get rid of. I personally don't mind it too much when you have rainfall in front of [inaudible] space. But if you do, then this is a really easy, simple technique to get rid of that rain. In the next image, we can do the same thing again with the rain on the model's face. So we can see here that there's a droplet of rain. It's very easy to remove that with the spot [inaudible] . We just draw a little shape around it and duplicate from the skin texture and it's gone. The Spot Healing tool, the Clone Stamp tool is very useful for tons of things when it comes to shooting, especially in the rain and snow. In this image, we can see that we have backlit the subject. This creates a really ethereal look, but it can also create this effect where the sun comes through and creates a bit of a haze in your lens. Again, like we did in the previous image, we can just use the Dehaze tool here to create a little bit more contrast and bring that clarity back into the image. In this image in particular, we want to really brighten it up, maybe subdue some of these highlights in the sky, warm it up because it is particularly cold in the image, and also brighten up this section here of the image. What we can do to start is bring up our shadows, and straight away this is making an effect, it's brightening up this section as you can see. If you didn't want to do that, you could use a mask. By masking an image, you can do loads of different things. You can brush them on and you can use the AI within Lightroom to help you out here. But we're going to brush in and just for the sake of this. We can just brush into the image the bits that you want to brighten up. Lightroom allows you loads of tools to be able to change the size and the feathering of this mask to make it look a little bit natural. For example, with this brush, it's a little more feathered. As we add it, it's going to transition into the image a little bit more nicely than where we used the strokes here. Then I'll just turn off the overlay so I can see what I'm doing. Then you come down and you can just directly select this selection. Of course, you're taking care in masking your image and making sure it's neat, but for the process of this video, I've just set it very roughly to show you how you can use this to brighten up one section of an image. When we bring this back, we can now see that we have brightened up this section, but we still want to warm up the overall image. Again, I'm just going to use temperature to do that. You can also use tint if you think it's going too yellow or something, you can bring it a bit more pink. Then we can just bring down the highlights to bring back some of this depth in the sky. In this image in particular, we can notice that the model's fingers are quite cold, they're red and they've taken on that red hue. That is something that I spoke about before about something you might want to avoid. Income arts are a little easier to warm up your model's hands on shoot than it is to fix it post. But we're going to give it a go anyway. There's a few things you can do here. Firstly, we can work with masking again so we can draw in on the hands where we want to mask, where it's particularly pink, and we can work here with the temperature sliders to try and warm up the hands a bit. As we can see, we probably need to draw the mask on a little bit further down as well because the wrists are now looking slightly odd, a little bit too pink for the image. That's how you would alter just the fingertips, you draw in your mask and you would do all of your adjustments in the mask. You can also change the hue here. For example, you can see how that would work. However, in this particular image, you can see that the face is also quite red. We're going to remove that mask and I want to show you how you would change just generally all of the skin tone on the model. What we'll do here is we're just going to very straight down to our Hue, and Saturation, and Luminance sliders, we're going to click on "Hue". We're going to click our little dot again, we're going to select the color of the skin that we want to change and we're just going to drag it until it looks a little bit warmer. So we can see that's very fine adjustment, but it looks a little bit warmer than before. In this lesson, we have covered how to use tools such as temperature, hue to alter skin tones when they're a little bit cold or hands are red, stuff like that. We've also looked at how to use the Dehaze tool to bring life into an image where you might have backlit it. The sun might be clouding the view of the model. We've looked at how to bring back your highlights, add a little bit more depth into those clear gray and white skies. We've also looked at how we can use retouching tools such as masks and Spot Healing brushes to really enhance the image and get rid of those things that we don't want in the image. Join me in the next lesson where we're going to be recapping the things that we've learned in this class. 13. Wrap Up!: That's us wrapped up. I hope that this course inspires you to get out and capture some portraits regardless of the weather. Come rain, come shine, that itch to create that itch to go and take portraits always exists at least for me. I know that feeling well equipped to shoot in these difficult scenarios is the first step to really having the confidence to go and do it. Hopefully, you now feel confident enough to get out and shoot your portraits in the winter time, regardless of how cold it is, regardless of how dark it is, and regardless of the tricky and unpredictable weather, the winter too often brings with it. The great thing about this class is hopefully is applicable all year round. Especially in the UK, we aren't always blessed with the best weather or the best lighting, even in the summer months. I even did a campaign, a summer campaign back in the summer while we had an insane hailstorm. You can use these tips throughout all of the year and regardless of the season. But please do share your portraits with us in the class project section of this class. I'd love to take a look and give you some feedback. It's always great to see how you guys are engaging with the class, but thank you guys so much for taking the time to enroll in this class. I hope you found it useful. Thank you guys so much for watching. I can't wait to see what you create.