The image above of Holly was taken at a small park area in Princeton New Jersey. We had beautiful natural light on this day as the sun was coming low in the sky, and with heavy tree coverage, I wanted to implement the ambient light before it was too low to make use of. We had this beautiful weathered wood railing and I wanted to include the bridge crossing in the background.

Typically I would prefer to have the sun back lighting my subject and use a reflector or strobe to fill in the front of the subject. In the case though, in order to use the background I wanted to use, I would have to flip it. So I used the beautiful soft ambient to light her, and used my Godox strobe to back light her. You can see the light providing the edge light to separate her from the background and with a little help from photoshop, I was able to give this backlight the look of the sun. In other words, I flipped the sun. Even though this image has the appearance of the sun being behind her, it was actually in front of her lighting the front of her.

This is one of my favorite portraits not only because it is a beautiful photograph, but because this was one of earlier photoshoots in my career when I was still learning how to use lighting. It taught me an important lesson as well in that you can create your own lighting to achieve the images you want, rather then having to rely only on ambient lighting. Starting out as a landscape photographer, I was always at the mercy of the available natural light. Since this shoot with Holly, I’ve worked extensively with strobe to achieve several different lighting looks. For more of my portrait work, you can visit my Portrait Gallery.