Often my clients want to do sessions at very bright times of the day, like 1pm or 2pm. I will definitely do sessions at that time if it’s with toddlers and that is their happiest time of the day. But, in that case we would need to plan accordingly and choose a location with shade or a covering over us. Whenever possible, I like to do my outdoor sessions either extremely early in the morning, or really close to sun set…..and this is why:
Today I did a little experiment with my kids, I wanted to see what was the earliest time in the evening that I could schedule a session. We arrived at the beach tonight at 6pm (sun was supposed to set around 8:15pm). I wanted to see if two hours before sun set would be ok, or if that was still a little too early. We went to a beach on the bay, so the sun rose in the morning over the bay and at this time of the day the sun was over the dunes. So, if I wanted a shot with the water in the background that pretty much meant that the subject was going to have to look towards the sun. Even if I positioned them in a sideways angle to the sun, the kids were still squinting at me. It was horrible! Here we were, all dressed in “beach picture clothes”, and they were getting all cranky and mad at me because it was uncomfortable to look at me. Here is an example:
My poor sweetheart. She’s really trying to cooperate, but you can see the sun is still so bright and shining way too harshly on her face and also making it hard for her to even look at me….
.jpg "new jersey beach sessions, ideal session times")
.jpg "new jersey beach portraits, ideal time of day")
One solution to bright sun on your subject is to turn your subject around, so that the sun is behind them (“backlighting”). I did that with my older daughter, I decided to just sacrifice having the water in the shot and just turn myself around and instead shoot from the other direction (so now the water is behind me):
.jpg "new jersey family beach portraits")
Ahhh…so much better.
So, in a nutshell…If we have your session at a bright time of the day I’m sure I can find a way to make it work out.
BUT, you get a lot more versatility if we do the session much closer to sunset because then we can do what we want to do without the sun being our boss. Since I did this session too early I had to sacrifice “water in the background” shots. That was ok for me because I know I’ll probably have another chance to try again, but if this is a once per year investment for your family you may want the versatility of having whatever shots we want to get, without the sun being in control of what we can or cannot do.
So, just something to think about!
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