Take portraits in three ways:

  1. Start with a reflector. Have your model stand with the sun to their back. The sun is the separation light and will create a lovely rim light around the subject. Use the reflector to reflect light back into their face. Hold the reflector higher for a more pleasing result.

2. Then with the subject still with their back to the sun, use flash to brighten the model’s face. Use the flash on camera at a relatively low setting such as 1/64. You don’t want to cast any shadows on the face just brighten it.

3. Bounce the flash off the reflector onto the subject’s face. You will need to raise the power of the flash.

Use the shooting mode manual and the widest aperture (smallest number) for shallow depth of field. You may need to use a fast shutter speed to compensate. When using flash, make sure to set it to High Speed Sync (HSS) in order to be able to use a shutter speed faster than the sync speed.

Make sure to photograph everyone in your group, not just one person. Put your 20 best outdoor portraits in an album on Flickr and send the best two to the class .