Against the light. Backlit photography

Light can change any scene, and it’s very important for a photographer to feel the light and understand how to use different positions of sources in relation to the subject to create the right mood in the frame. It’s easy to work with side or frontal light. It’s much harder to work with backlight, the light that’s behind the subject. More difficult, but more interesting. In this article we are not going to discuss studio photography, but the cases when there is only one light source but the most powerful one – the Sun.

Niko D500 full review and test drive

Nikon D500,

AF-S DX NIKKOR 16-80mm f/2 lens.8-4E ED VR

f/9.0, 1/8000, ISO 200

Light pointed directly into the lens knocks out shadows, making them black and turning all objects into silhouettes, depriving them of detail. You can play on it – try to frame the shot so that the silhouettes of the objects overlap minimally, do not interfere with each other. Choose some object that can be clearly recognized even by silhouette – the profile of a person, a building, a plant. Aim for minimalism in the frame – don’t forget, you’ve already seen what’s going on in the shadows, and your viewers haven’t yet, they’ll only be able to count the silhouettes.

Sometimes, though, the backlight doesn’t eat up all the details. The light from the sun leaning toward the horizon is not just warmer, it loses a lot in intensity. That means some detail in the shadows will still be there. Try to shoot in RAW with a 1-2 point negative exposure compensation, so you can avoid over highlights and the soft back light will nicely emphasize the outlines. This effect is especially interesting when taking pictures of animals – the backlight makes their fur glow, and the characters start to shine. But remember, for this kind of processing it’s better to shoot at the lowest ISO possible.

The thing is that noises in photos with high ISO are best in shadows where you can see unpleasant green spots in the shadows when you begin to lighten them in RAW converter.

NikonD500,

AF-SDXNIKKOR 16-80mmf/2 lens.8-4EEDVR

f/6.3, 1/320, ISO 100

The contrasting light of the setting sun nicely outlined the grazing horses

It is possible to preserve details in shadows without complex processing, but it requires some additional equipment. Try placing a reflector in front of your character and reflecting the sunlight so that it fills the shadows. There are different types of reflectors, each will give a different effect: matte white will fill the shadows with a soft neutral light, gold reflected light is warmer, and silver reflected light is cooler.

A slightly more drastic way to lighten the shadows is with the flash. Using the built-in flash for this purpose is not the best option. Direct “straight ahead” light could be interesting if you have a complex lighting setup, but in most cases it would just erase the shadows and make the picture look flat. Take advantage of the SU-800 Wireless Sync System and one or more Nikon Speedlights placed to the left and right of the subject for a more interesting and three-dimensional shot.

Nikon D500,

The AF-S DX NIKKOR 16-80mm f/2 lens.8-4E ED VR,

f/8.0, 1/2500, ISO 200

The cow’s muzzle is illuminated by a gold reflector

Nikon D500,

AF-S DX NIKKOR 16-80mm f/2 lens.8-4E ED VR

f/9.0, 1/100, ISO 100

The berries are illuminated by a flash placed in front of the berries from below and linked to the camera by radio

The backlight of a setting sun looks very impressive in a landscape as well. Sunset or sunrise rays light up rocks in interesting ways and make the grass and leaves of trees glow. Lately I’ve been shooting a lot more landscapes against the light rather than in the light. But there are a few complications with this shooting technique.

First of all, a picture taken against the sun has such a wide dynamic range that most modern cameras even with the most advanced sensors cannot expose it correctly. You’d most likely get an over-lit area around the sun, and severely underexposed shadows.

One way to avoid this is to shoot heavily underexposed in RAW to get normally exposed lights and heavily underexposed shadows. Check the histogram of the resulting photograph – it should be shifted to the left, into the area of shadows. If you see that the histogram is truncated on the left, it means that some of the pixels in the photo are black, information in the highlights is lost. You have to correct the exposure compensation so as to slightly lighten the frame.

If the histogram shows clipping on the right side, it means that you overexposed the frame and some pixels became white without any information in them. Most likely you’ll get white areas in the sun – there’s no point in fighting that, the light source is too bright. But try to minimize overexposure by adjusting the exposure compensation to save the information in the areas around the sun.

The Nikon D500’s dynamic range is wide enough to keep information in the shadows that you can pull out in post-processing. In this case it’s better to shoot at lowest ISO to avoid too much noise in the shadows. As a rule, shooting against the light allows you to work with relatively fast shutter speeds, but bring a tripod in case you need to work with slow shutter speeds.

Nikon D500,

AF-S DX NIKKOR 16-80mm f/2.8-4E ED VR

f/11.0, 1/160, ISO 50

The rays of the dawn sun illuminate the frost on the grass.

This scene was shot in one frame and then pulled out the overlights and shadows in post-processing

Another way to avoid over highlights in the sky is to use a gradient filter. Filters like this one have a blacked out plate. They reduce the brightness of part of the image by 1, 2 or 3 steps i.e. 2, 4 or 8 times . These filters help you get quick, high-quality results, but they require careful maintenance and aren’t cheap.

Besides the gradient on them extends in a straight line, which means that besides the sky you will darken any “top” of a remarkable object – the crown of a tree, for example, or a mountain peak. In recent years I’ve given up filters completely and I shoot similar things in two exposures-one for the dark ground and one underexposed for the light sky so I can assemble them in a digital camera.

Nikon D500,

AF-S DX NIKKOR 16-80mm f/2 lens.8-4E ED VR,

f/16.0, 1/50, ISO 100

The grass is nicely illuminated by the setting sun. This one was shot in two frames

and then glued together in a graphics editor using brightness masks

Another problem of shooting against the light: birds flying into the lens. Alas, even the most up-to-date optics can’t save you from these ubiquitous scoundrels. And even a lens hood won’t keep them out of the way for a masterpiece shot, especially if the sun is shining directly into the lens. But there is a way to get rid of them.

Clean the front lens first. Dust, dirt and scratches on it are the main generators of glare. That way you get rid of the sloppy and dirty bunnies, only the purebred, the biggest and most beautiful bunnies are left. Now it’s time to get rid of them too.

Put your camera on a tripod, frame your shot and shoot it with bunnies.

Now block the exposure and focus and use your finger to cover the suns in the frame – the bunnies will instantly disappear.

Now you have to load two frames as layers of the same file, and paste the right part, cleaned from the bunnies, from the frame with the finger in the main frame. Voila – you got a clear shot where no hares get in the way of admiring the beautiful back light of the low, warm sun.

Two exposures and montage in Graphics Editor.