Photography tips | Preventing squinty eyes

Jana asked:

"So what do you do if you are outside? How do you get non-squinting photos???"

Good question.

It's just a matter of positioning the subject that you are shooting. If you're wanting your subject to have their eyes open and looking at the camera, you never want to position your subject directly facing the sun. That causes squinty eyes. You always want to turn your subject so that there is no direct light touching the skin on their face. Here's an example...

If I wanted it to be technically perfect, I probably should have turned them a bit more to their right to avoid the sun hitting the little boy's face, but because it hit the side, I don't mind it. The sun was extremely bright while I was taking this. It was about an hour before sunset, so if I had faced them toward the sun, there's no way they could have been looking at me without squinty eyes.



The other solution to squinty eyes is to find open shade. Open shade just means that the shade is even. The shade of a tree usually is not open shade because there are still beams of light coming through. A good example of open shade is the shade of a tall building. If you're a beginner photographer, that is a good place to start. Then you don't have to worry so much about dealing with the sun.

Another tip about lighting and eyes...

You want to be shooting at the right time of day. The best light is always the last hour before sunset, and is referred to as the "golden hour". The ULTIMATE light is the last 15 minutes before sunset. Here are some examples of that last 15 minutes.

Notice that I'm shooting INTO the sun, creating a back-lit shot. Not completely into the sun or everything would be hazy and washed out... but enough into the sun that it's giving me that really golden coloring. You can only get this color right before sunset.

Let's show you what eyes look like when you shoot at the wrong time of day.

Sometimes people don't understand why I like to shoot in the evenings. Do you notice that Ellie is sporting some dark eye sockets? Yeah, not very appealing. It wouldn't have mattered how I turned her. In the middle of the day, any direction I would've turned her would've been the wrong direction. I still liked a couple of the shots I got, just none where she was actually looking at me.










If you're still reading... good for you! Ha.
I really enjoy writing these posts, and hope they are helping someone out there in the blogging world. So if you have a photography question, please leave it in the comments.