Having an outdoor female portrait photo shoot for personal and group is great business chance and all you need to do is know how to shoot outdoor female portrait with no flash which is using the available light. It might be simple photo session but if you just started your photographer career than sometimes you gonna feel nervous or confuse on location.
If someday you got an enquiry than few great tips that I could share today are:
- Just be confidence at the first time you receive their phone call or email
- Ask how many people that gonna be join on that session
- Ask the location (consider travel expenses like flight or hotel if it is far from your studio)
- Send them you package and price
- Use reliable camera gears that you got
- Shoot with fun, and
- Do the right post production as well
Now I’m gonna share to you about my previous outdoor female portrait that I did in Bali Indonesia just few months ago,
Before it begin someone called me and asking me to fly to Bali (it’s 600 km from my studio) and they gonna have like 3 hours outdoor photo session with me cause they saw my portfolio and Voila…they love it! So here is the information that I’ve got:
- 6 women will join on this session
- Shooting will be in Suluban Cliff private villa, and
- 3 hours of shooting
This villa have infinity cliff-front pool and it was awesome!
What Camera and Gears That Should Bring
Now lets take a short preparation about gears, if you read my previous article about cheap professional camera than you could see some reliable and great used camera gears that still able to shoot in high quality. Since it takes only 3 hours shooting so I bring 1 camera body and 2 kind of lenses and here is the lists:
Now how about you? So actually you can bring any kind of camera and lenses that you have, don’t use money too much when you just starting your photography business. If there is a rental camera company near your home than go there and rent it but if you don’t have any camera at all than ask your friend and give money to rent it.
How to Shoot Outdoor Female Portrait with No Flash
Shooting with no flash means you must take a good care about available light from the sun, this God’s light is extremely amazing. If you can know how it works than you wouldn’t need your speedlight anymore, so I will post a photo below and I will describe how I shoot on this frame with 3 simple tricks:
1 – Know Where the Sun Came From
In so many tutorials you will heard that there are 2 (two) best time to shoot, in the morning and in the sunset golden time, for me it just a theory cause there is no excuse on the real job. The picture that you see above is taken at 1pm noon when the sun so harsh and it burn my skin so all you need to do is know where the sun came from and use the shadow to create 3 dimension shape so the object will look stunning.
Through this photo you could see that the light came from the back left side of the lady so here you will see that her right hands is brighter than the left. Actually I got a great time to shoot this lady cause the harsh of the sun directly made a great top light to her hair, look at in more detail cause you will see her hair is shiny cause of the sun light and it was amazing!
2 – Know How to Pose Your Client
My client today have a great body shape and if you got a client just like me it seems to be a benefit for any photographer.
Her name is Irina and she looks so great with her body so the first tips is you can ask your client to stand in front of the fence or wall than asking her to hold the iron fence using both of hands, this pose make her shoulder wider and look so elegant.
Ask her to wear the sun glasses fashion for women so she gonna feel comfort during the hard sun light and face directly to your lens, Boom..this is the result, it was stunning!
3 – Know What Kind of Dress or Wardrobe that She Wear
A half hour before shooting I ask the lady about what kind of dress that she wear till I know she bring a black sexy sleeveless tank tops and sequin tassel mini skirt which create a good shape on her body. When you got a client (with great body shape) and use this kind of wardrobe than everything is gonna be OK, so what I did is asking her to make a little twist on her leg and shoot it!
By the way you could see all of my outdoor female portrait session on the link below,
Beautiful Lady Photo Session of Irina and Friends in Suluban Cliff Bali
Yup I hope you got an inspiration from this work and these 3 simple tricks are really useful to answer a question about how to shoot outdoor female portrait with no flash which mean you optimizing the sun light as well.
Next I’m gonna give you another tips about travel for photo shoot in Bali, Indonesia. This city was great and full of culture and people kindness and surely the local food that you couldn’t doubt. Some people know where the Bali is but they don’t know where Indonesia is, actually Bali is one of the city that Indonesia had and during past decades it belong to the most favourite destination for anyone.
So this is what you should do:
Check the flight schedule and rates – no matter where you are than you could ask your nearest tour agency or check your flight rates online. Actually there are hundred of direct flight to Bali from Melbourne, Singapore, Bankok, or Kuala Lumpur so just browse it as fast as you can and one of great platform to do it as Jetradar.
Know where to stay – you could use any kind of accommodation type depend on how much money that you could spend. During past years I use regularly Booking.com to find the best hotel in Bali and use Airbnb if I want to stay and feel like locals even I can meet my host right in the house that I rent. One good recommendation to stay in Bali is by spend nights around Canggu, this area is superb and one great unit that you could book using my USD30 stay voucher is this one,