Senior Portrait Photography: Natural Light Techniques

If you think you need a ton of expensive equipment to take high quality senior portraits, you may want to reconsider. As Michael Sasser demonstrates in the video below, all you really need is a camera and reflector. Using this basic setup, Sasser was able to take some gorgeous shots of the soon-to-be high school graduate as you can see in the photographs following the clip. Take a look and perhaps get some fresh ideas on how to approach your next senior portrait gig:

On his Nikon body, Sasser used all Nikon lenses which included 85mm 1.4, 50mm 1.4, and a 35mm 1.4 though he adds that the 50mm is not a lens he uses often. No filters were used during the shoot as Sasser said he compensated for bright light by using a shutter speed of 1/4000th.

using a reflector for portraitsnatural lighting

Sasser kept his editing simple with some minor tweaks. He says all he had to do in post was “some skin smoothing, curves and levels for contrast, vibrance boost in lightroom, and some local touches for the eyes to make them pop. Outside of that, its mostly just great light, and she had great skin!”

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