High Key Photography: Available Light

A couple of weeks ago, I had a portrait session with my friend's little sister, Grey. I took her portraits as my graduation gift to her. Here are the photographs...

(click to zoom in)

The location? A studio? Nope. I took the photos in my room's veranda. Grey and her sister, Gretle went to my place at around 3:00pm. I started taking photos at around 5:00pm after all the preparations (make up etc.) and chikahan (catching up). I took advantage of the sun's position in the sky during that time which was directly parallel to us. I asked Gretle to hold a diffuser (my big 5-in-1 reflector's diffuser) behind Grey, with the sun behind it. I metered at Grey's left cheek and overexposed by a stop, set the focus in her left eye and then started taking photos.

Here is a simple diagram of our setup:


Camera Settings: 1/200 1.8 85mm

At that time, the color temperature of the sun was a bit warm and gave the photos a reddish tint for I used the daylight white balance which I thought was ok but after a few adjustments when I was post-processing the photos, I ended up making the photos look colder, which I thought was perfect because Grey was wearing winter clothes.