Midday portrait session

I consider myself a professional at taking photos in the midday light, the light that every photographer I know would tell you THE worst you can have. I simply never had much choice so had to adapt to this light, and in all honesty I don’t hate it.

I have two kids so our outings (and the opportunity to take photos) mostly happen during these bright hours. This day my youngest and I were at home and had the best time playing around with the lemons from our tree in the middle of the day. It was a sunny day of course, we live on Côte d’Azur and pretty much everyday is a sunny day, and we played in the shadow of said tree. My advice on such sunny days is to make use of shadowed areas as much as possible as it diffuses the light a lot making shadows on faces much softer.

Here are my settings for very sunny portrait sessions:

ISO 100 (duh!)

Shutter speed 1000-2500, sometimes higher, depending on the activity

F-stop 2.0