It took me a while to learn that some photography advice is just a starting point and, sooner or later, will start to hold you back. The well-meaning tips we give beginners can often hold them back from evolving as photographers, and today I’ll try to address a few of them.
1. Shoot in the Shade or on Overcast Days
This tip aims to save you from harsh midday sun, bad overhead light, and super contrasty shots. But it will also lead to boring, forgettable photos with flat light. Because when we eliminate contrast, our portraits will lack dimension and punch.
Super basic approach for portraits if you are just starting with portrait photography:
- Timing: Avoid midday. Shoot in the gentle light of morning or evening to avoid harsh contrast and light that is hard to manage.
- Direction: Have your subject face toward the light source – not exactly at the sun, but have their face in that general direction. This simple act creates immediate sculpting on the face. (Even on a cloudy day, the sun is a directional source. Having your subject face where the sun is behind the clouds will still yield better shape than flat, overhead light.
- Shoot from the shadow side: For more dimensionality, try and have your camera pointing on the other side of the face than the source of light/sun.
2. Use the whites of the eyes for White Balance
This is a terrible method for getting the right white balance in your portraits for a couple of reasons. First of all, the whites of the eyes are rarely that neutral, and if you hit a small vein with that eyedropper, your photo will become green. Also, it assumes the light on a face is uniform in color. But in reality, outdoors, the color temperature (Kelvin) of light in the shadows is noticeably cooler (bluer) than the light in the highlights (warmer). So, depending on what kind of light (direct /reflected light) is hitting the sclera of the eye, you will get a different white balance.
Better method for a good white balance in your portraits:
- Drag the white balance slider fully to the cool side, then back until the image no longer looks cold/ blue.
- Remember the value you got
- Drag it fully to the warm side, then back until it doesn’t look super orange.
- Remember the value you got.
- Split the difference between them.
This method effectively finds a visual average between the warm highlights and cool shadows on the face, landing on a neutral white balance that looks natural. In the video, I show a live edit where this method gets me within 100 Kelvin of a reading from my color checker—it’s remarkably effective.
Bonus tip: A perfect technical white balance isn’t always the goal. A warm, orange glow from a sunset tells a story—don’t sterilize your images chasing technical perfection over emotions.
3. Avoid clipping at all costs
Clipping is bad; it means we are losing data, but turning this into an obsession is even worse if you end up underexposing your subject.
If you sacrifice the exposure on your subject to save some highlights in the background, you’ll introduce a lot of noise later on when you try to recover details in post-processing. And the reality is that sometimes elements in your photos are going to be bright, and its ok to capture that in your images. Be it a window, the sun, or any other source of light that’s in frame, it’s ok for it to feel bright.
For example: You’re shooting a portrait during a beautiful golden hour. The sun is behind your subject, creating a gorgeous, glowing rim light around their hair and shoulders. However, if the brightest point in the sky is clipping, you shouldn’t panic and massively underexpose your subject just to make sure the sky looks good. After all, is the photo about the person, or the sky? In the example below, it was all about the sky, and you can see how noisy my subject ended up looking.
Not going to lie, I would edit this very differently today
A Better Approach: Expose for your subject. Or at least keep it close; massively undersposing your subject will lead to noise when you try to recover the shadows while editing. If a non-essential highlight clips a bit, embrace it or reframe your photo. But keep in mind, people usually look at the person in the photo, and only photography nerds will obsess over some random little highlight that’s clipping in the background. A clean subject is infinitely more important; as for the background, just make sure it’s not super contrasty and distracting.
4. Make sure you have details in your shadows
This is another advice that I think we might have taken too far over the last years. Just because modern cameras can capture a ton of details, it doesn’t mean we need them in our final photos.
Crushing the Shadows and Highlights sliders to see “everything” creates a flat, muddy image. And more importantly, it destroys the natural contrast that made the scene compelling to photograph in the first place. And at the end of the day, do you really need to see every little detail in those shadows?
A Better Approach: Edit for feeling.
Use the Blacks and Whites sliders in Lightroom to gently place your tones while preserving the natural contrast. Let shadows be dark and highlights be bright, and try not to push them over 50. This approach maintains the mood and intent of your original scene without revealing every single detail in your image. Especially with cinematic and moody portraits, you are trying to create a mood and tell a story, not to expose every little flaw in the skin.
If you’re looking for tools to help you craft beautiful, intentional light and color—and move beyond these basic rules—my presets are designed to do exactly that. You can find them, along with more resources, at https://vmoldo.gumroad.com/
