Location Photographer Guide to Strong Sunlight Beach Shoots

Fashion photography is a specialisation devoted to photographing clothing and other fashion items, typically for advertisements or fashion magazines. As the fashion photography genre has developed so has the style and standard of the shoots with the clothes often enhanced by exotic locations and props such as vehicles or animals for an eye catching effect.

In the studio, commercial photographers are working with a blank canvas. They are in control of every aspect of their shot, from the choice of backdrop right through to the mood and atmosphere of the lighting. On their own, studio flash units simply produce a high powered burst of artificial daylight, which can be positioned as required and modified using a wide range of accessories to control the quality of the light. On location, things are quite different. The weather is pretty much in control of the quality of the natural lighting. Apart from planning ahead, the best the photographer can do is to react to the prevalent ambient lighting conditions and, where necessary, to modify its quality. At the most basic level, this means that dull lighting will need to be brightened, or bright lighting softened using reflectors, portable flash or, in some cases, a combination of both.

For the fashion photographer, although the model has to look good, the client is going to be looking at the quality of the lighting on his or her products - the garments. It is for photographers to use the natural lighting found at a particular location to its best advantage.

Case study: Battery powered flash
For a Barbados beach shoot the natural beauty of the scene was inspired a costume change to a simple white dress. At around 3pm the sun was quite high in the sky, and at about 110 degrees relative to the camera position, creating shadows that were both crisp and well defined. In situations like this it isn't practical to use either a reflector or on-camera fill-in to reduce contrast and soften shadows. For best effect, a reflector would have needed to be quite close to the model, but with such a wide-angle scene it would be clearly visible in the shot. With the photographer positioned around 18 feet from the model, on-camera flash could not have provided anywhere near enough light output for effective fill-in. To lift the shadow areas on the model and the dress, I used a Broncolor MiniPuls C80 monobloc flash unit powered by a car battery converter. The head was fitted with a standard spill-kill and hand held in the photographer's right hand (camera right) Exposure was measured using a Sekonic daylight/flash meter, and the flash output was set to half an f-stop less than the main exposure suggested by the meter. Polaroids were used to make sure that the white dress was holding detail and not burning out.

Now of course the only real way to improve your location photography, whether for fashion, advertising or editorial, is to get out there and do it. And if you're just starting out don't wait to get paid; with digital test shoots meaning no expensive film and development costs there's no excuse not to be out shooting anyone who will stay still for a few minutes! I hope a couple of these tips will help you develop your location photographer skills and look forward to seeing your published work soon!