Scouting locations for outdoor family portraits requires a thoughtful approach to lighting, composition, and finding the right environment to make your subjects shine. Whether you’re dealing with direct sunlight or working in shaded areas, understanding how light interacts with your surroundings is crucial.
Coming to you from Michele Celentano with Westcott Lighting, this insightful video explores the key aspects of location scouting for family portraits. Celentano emphasizes the importance of light direction, which can drastically change the mood of your images. When the sun is high, she looks for shaded areas that offer more controlled lighting. This allows her to use external strobes, like the Westcott FJ400, to fill in shadows and create balanced, flattering light on her subjects. The combination of natural and artificial light helps avoid harsh contrasts and raccoon eyes, especially during midday shoots.
Celentano also shares her strategy for choosing locations based on texture and background quality. Rather than focusing on finding the most picturesque scene, she prioritizes areas where the background can be blurred into a soft, dreamy bokeh when shooting at wide apertures. This approach shifts the emphasis onto the subjects while still providing a visually interesting backdrop. By paying attention to how light filters through the background, she ensures that even simple settings contribute to the overall composition without overwhelming the main focus of the portrait.
The video also touches on the practical aspects of using natural elements as posing props. Celentano demonstrates how to utilize objects like picnic tables and stone walls to create layered compositions. These props add depth and dimension to the images, offering multiple posing options without the need for additional equipment. This not only simplifies the process but also makes it easier to achieve variety within a single location, giving you more creative freedom during the shoot.
In another valuable segment, Celentano discusses the benefits of using a tripod during outdoor sessions. While it might seem cumbersome, especially when working with groups, a tripod allows for precise composition and consistency across shots. This is particularly useful when you need to maintain the same setup while adding or rearranging subjects. By freeing your hands, a tripod also lets you interact more naturally with your clients, helping to capture genuine expressions without the distraction of constantly adjusting your camera. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Celentano.
If you would like to continue learning about the art of portraiture, be sure to check out our range of tutorials on the subject in the Fstoppers store.
This was a super thorough video and I loved how she shared the location scouting before the family arrived. It was a bit wild seeing someone use a light meter out on location and a tripod. The photos were great though!