How about starting Tuesday with 19 photos of magical backlight to infuse your photographer’s eye?!

Magical backlighting is what makes all the difference between a snapshot and a yummy, “take your breath away” photo.  If you were to go through all the blog posts I’ve done on photo tips or family travel, you’ll notice that 98% of my photos have strong backlighting.  I love it!  I can’t get enough of it!  And as a photographer, I’m always searching for it.

This summer, I directed a twelve hour commercial photo shoot for one of my brother’s brands, Bella, based out of NY.  You know their awesome kitchen appliance line and have probably seen them in Target, Macy’s, JCPenney, and more.  They flew to Seattle for the photo shoot, and weeks of prepping went into it.  On the actual shooting day almost five hours was spent on my team prepping hair and makeup for models, product and food styling, vignette staging, before I even took a single photo.  Guess what I was basing the timing of the actual shooting around?  Answer: The hours that the sun was going to come pouring in through the windows so I could capture magical backlighting.

Do you have to be a professional photographer to capture magical backlighting results?  Not at all.  In fact, check out the Disney Junior Capture Your Story with Me Ra Koh episode where I taught a mom how to do this with her son and his pet fish.  You can even see what a mom viewer captured after seeing the episode!

Even though you don’t need to be a pro, magical backlighting is tough to achieve in Auto mode.  This is why we have trained all our CONFIDENCE Teachers to help their students get off Auto and on Manual mode within one day.  They are teaching all their students this Fall and Winter “Me Ra’s Method for Shooting in Manual” because it’s no nonsense, simple, easy AND beats the winter blues of having frustrating indoor photo results!  Finessing your results takes practice, but knowing what camera settings and how to measure the degree of light can be learned in a day with the right teacher!

Backlighting can give you a dynamic range of beautiful results.  Check out these nineteen photos with magical backlight from me and my teachers.  Scroll down to see the gallery of photos.  This was one of our most popular posts yet on Disney’s Babble!

Be inspired!

xo,

m