A few weeks ago I started a series about photography tips for bloggers and it is now time to talk about shooting outdoor.
But before starting, let me remind you the others blog post of this series, here they are:

In fashion photography even for bloggers having a good background and a good location is fundamental to create a nice blog post. Your room can still work nicely but usually there is not enough space to settle all the equipment. And I am referring to just find a position for our camera that won’t fall in two seconds (I am used to create a huge pile of books…don’t ask me more!)

But when we convince friends to help us out in taking pictures, we usually go outside, so in this blog post I want to give you some little tips I have learned by practice of what it is best when shooting outdoor. Most of them are dedicated to light as usual. Bear with me(:

Never go into direct sunlight. Especially when it’s a clear sunny day with no clouds on the horizon. Look for the shade. Always. What you see with your eyes is not what you see from your camera (See picture below).

If you can’t avoid direct sunlight there is only one way to have great pictures. First of all, you must have the sun towards you in order not to have one side in the dark and one in the light like in the pic above. Editing becomes a nightmare afterwards. Instead if you look for bright walls – just one color please – it would look really nice. Otherwise if it is a grey day, look for brick walls. They will surprise you. Examples below.

One of the secret of a great picture is the light. I know I sound repetitive. But, which is the BEST light? Sunset! What you get at sunset is impressive, the sun is low so the rays are more delicate and they have pastel colors (sunrise) and warm colors (sunset). The picture below was taken at twilight to be honest and was not taken digitally – can you tell?

Meaning when you can’t have depth of field with your camera (aka the blurry background) find alternatives and for me that is a long road/street that screams endless path. It makes your picture no longer still adding movement.

Also if you live in a fancy city or just in a city, find a blogger friendly area with not so many people around if you don’t fell comfortable being seeing by strangers and with nice colors. Usually bright intense colors are difficult to be a nice background because they would stand out more than you in pictures. So be careful with graffiti.

Otherwise, try to find a simple clear building, a nice house and don’t forget to be careful with green areas, green is difficult as well. Let me you give an example: Notting Hill in London. Perfect, white houses or pastel colors or even bright ones. Any park..the green will overwhelmed you anyway. So my suggestion is see what is your piece for the article  and think about where it is best shown: in front of a white wall or in a little forest?