Project 52 - Week 25: Backlight

The very first photography class I went to had backlighting as part of the agenda.  More recently I attended a Professional Photographer's Association class in portrait lighting, and once again, backlighting was given ample coverage.  Backlighting happens to be one of my favorite photography lighting techniques.  One of my other favorite things to do with backlighting is run the two words together, which I'm sure, drives some people crazy.

If you want to get into the technicalities a little more, but don't want all the techno speak, here's a good blog article by Michael Kormos of The Clickin Moms Blog.  Many of the elements that Michael talks about are what I used to take the photos you will see below.

Let's start here.

A few blogs back we were talking about angles.  It was in one of these shoots that I took this photo of Billie.  She is an ideal candidate for back lit photos because her hair becomes iridescent in the light.  Backlighting is almost always going to produce a shadow in the facial area.  With Billie, this can be dangerous because her eyes are like raccoon eyes.  I always hesitate to use a reflector with Billie, because I don't want the front area to be as bright as the back, and her hair does pick up light quite a bit.  In this case I used a diffused flash placed further away and behind my camera.  This is a different pose than the photo I used for the angles blog and is a more subdued backlighting example. You can sometimes lose detail in a back lit photo, and I do lose a bit around the snout to eye area, but keeping the eyes in focus is important, and if we are shooting with a wider aperture, this often happens.

Here's another pose, a bit later, with sun going down just behind her and filtered through large hemlock trees.

She really had lost interest in me and was looking for squirrels and/or deer.  I liked the light on her back edges of fur, and I think she kind of looks like she is daydreaming, so I kept the photo.  Billie is one of a few dogs that will pose without treats, but she does lose interest quickly.  You can't use squeaky toys with her because she becomes a projectile.

All of the images are taken in RAW format with manual camera settings and spot metering.

I thought I would do one more with Lilah during the week this week, so that I would have a current photo for the week.  I have not taken a photo of Lilah in a while, and she was very excited about being the chosen subject, because.....well.....there are always treats.  So I had to wait for her to finish bouncing all around the yard before she settled in to really concentrate on trying to get one of the treats, instead of being happy about the thought of them.

I seriously cringed when I looked through my viewfinder and realized how unkempt she was.  It is time for the groomer.  Lilah is a tomboy, so she is never frilly and  frou-frouey. I decided to go ahead with this photo because you can see by that face she was just biding her time for a treat.  She is sitting in a circle of light, which, again, is being filtered by the trees.  There are a number of light leaks from the trees in the background. I did have to hold my hand up to shade some of the sun out while taking this photo, and while there is a bit of blow out on her head, I tend to sacrifice that for the light when I am outside.

Time to move on through the blog circle to see how other professional photographers handled this week's subject.  It's always fun to see the different approaches, don't you think?  We are starting with  Kelly Middlebrooks and Little White Dog Pet Photography of Sioux Falls, SD.