Last week I was fortunate enough to travel allllll the way down to Peru for a retreat hosted by Aftershoot. It was 100% focused on building community, a few lectures, and shooting on location.

Along with many of the planned events there were countless side discussions (my favorite part tbh) over meals etc... and one photo came up a few times as I was talking through some of my favorite images capture:

(above) 24 mm_1-200 sec at f - 11_ISO 50

I talked with Jason https://www.instagram.com/thejasonmarino/ for a while about many aspects of photography, but he left an interesting comment on the above photo:

I can't, for the life of me, figure out how to get naturally lit shots that have bright sun exposed to still show good skies and have a nice balance of brightness on the subject. It's like I skipped that class and went straight to using flash for these types of situations. Need to go back to square one. 

Jason is very much an OCF photographer, which is totally fine, but not always necessary when shooting into the sun. You can shape the light around yours subjects just by moving you and them in physical space using natural reflectors. Of course, a solid understanding about the limitations of your camera sensor is needed too. This is the original image captured on my R3:

The video attached to this post takes a 10 min dive into the entire editing process (using my editing profile that's available here) and all the considerations I have to balance while making an image like this. In short, it's all about not ignoring the quality of light on your subjects even though the RAW capture has them as a silhouette. You can't just underexpose everything in camera and expect the final edit to come out clean and natural.

But Jason's final note "need to go back to square one" does remind me about the mindset I've had ever since I bought every flash I could afford (along with every modified) in my first year of working only to realize the look of my work wasn't improving. That mindset is to maximize what I'm capable of doing with as little equipment as possible. Only after I maximize absolutely every inch of what I can get out a scene w/ natural light will I start to bring in off camera flash, or artificial light of any kind.

Shooting without extra flashes on stands, or if you're lucky with a partner holding it, is immeasurably faster than shooting with flashes. Ever minute you spend troubleshooting a firing issue, or walking back and forth from your light stand to your subject is a minute you're not spending actually taking a photo - so you better be sure it's absolutely worth it.

I have nothing against OCF! There are plenty of photographers that use it quickly and effectively, particularly duo couples that always shoot together, but sometimes it's important to remember to go back to square one and build from there.

Enjoy the video & as always please comment any questions at all!