Located in Houston TX & serving the surrounding areas, Sarah Borchgrevink Photography offers lovely outdoor pregnancy and family portraits in an outdoor atmosphere. Check out some effective tips for creating dynamic images on cloudy, dark, or foggy mornings.
Photography a Family or Maternity Session on a Cloudy, Foggy & Overcast Morning
Hi, friends! Good morning to you! Today's blog post is an overview on photographing a family or maternity session on a day in which the weather is cloudy, overcast or even foggy, such as the early mornings. While most of the time, the warm golden light look is what is most preferred, sometimes sessions are time sensitive, such as maternity or family photos. For example, maternity portraits typically take place between 32-35 weeks, however, you may be limited on time frames because of things like high risk pregnancies, baby arriving early, or perhaps Dad travels often and of course, Dad is a vital character in all things maternity or family. This in mind, these tips and tricks are helpful in ensuring you can move forward with your session and provide stunning outdoor images despite the weather being gloomy.
Before we delve into the three tips I am going to list, please allow me to introduce the R family to you! They're a sweet family of three. They'll be adding a new baby girl to their family in just a few short weeks! They'll be on my newborn calendar for a studio baby session so I am excited to see them soon. We photographed this session in Houston, TX and began right at sunrise. I typically spend about 25-30 minutes with my outdoor family sessions so we will hit many poses and have a lot of fun, but not tire the little one out and expect too much of them.
Be Inspired By the Scenery and Surroundings
When working outdoors in an on location setting, look around and allow yourself to be inspired. How do the trees frame your images? Where are the clouds? Ask yourself how color of the grass will photograph and where your subjects will look best. By checking out your environment, you can see where the light is most soft, even and dispersed beautifully so that you may place your subjects there.
Open your aperture
Since the light on a cloudy day is more soft and subdued since there is less sun, you can open your aperture, or use a wider f/stop, to allow more light to enter the image. You'll also want to compensate for subject movement, so make sure to keep your shutter speed fast enough to resist blurry movements, but also keep your ISO high enough to be properly exposed without too much noise. I use a Mark iii body and a Canon 135 mm f/2.0L lens when working outdoors so these settings are based on the equipment I use.
For these shots, my f/stop is at f/2.2, shutter speed is 1/500 and ISO is 800. My white balance is also set to around 7500 for the skin tones and I used spot metering so that their skin is illuminated properly.
Be mindful of where the clouds and sky are
While a beautiful blue sky filled with brilliant golden light is lovely during a sunrise session, during a foggy or overcast morning, the sky can look flat and grey, which may not add interest to your images. For this session, I choice to avoid using the sky and focus on connections and love between this expecting mother and her family.
Sarah Borchgrevink Photography is a Houston Newborn Photographer specializing in gorgeous posed newborn sessions. Her studio is located in Northwest Houston. In addition to breathtaking baby portraiture, Sarah also offers stylish natural light family photography as well as dynamic outdoor maternity sessions for expecting mothers and couples. Sarah joyfully serves the entire Harris and Montgomery county areas including North Houston, Cypress, Tomball, Spring, Jersey Village, The Woodlands, Magnolia, Conroe, Willis, Montgomery, Humble, Kingwood, Porter, New Caney, Waller, Memorial & West Houston, Katy, Fulshear, Sugar Land, Pearland, Hempstead, Richmond, West University, Rice Village and Porter TX. Connect to chat with Sarah today! Please consider booking your session at your earliest convenience in order to secure your appointments on the calendar.