Indoors the lighting is too strong in one direction - from the window on to the sitter. Out of doors the lighting suffers from an exactly opposite defect - it is too even all round. To obtain relief and contrast we must cut it off on one side or the other. One of the simplest ways of doing this is to place the sitter in the angle of a building where light from behind and from one side is quite cut off by high walls. Then there is probably too much top light, and a light screen of muslin stretched a few feet above the sitter will greatly improve matters. With a second screen at the side we practically reconstruct a regular studio, and some very effective portraiture can be done with such an arrangement ; or better, with the portable studios constructed on the same principle by Tylar of Birmingham and others.

Those who want to study portraiture as it can be done without a studio should fix up a couple of stout parallel copper wires at about 8 feet from the ground and about 6 feet apart. On these can be hung screens of muslin or opaque cloth, with which can be obtained almost any sort of lighting.

Arranging Sitter and Background

It is worth while to try heads, or half-lengths (head and hands, in a sitting posture), and to make them a good size on the plate instead of confining oneself to full-length figures in small size amidst a great mass of surroundings, as is usual. Choose your background and arrange the camera before asking your sitter to be seated, for until you have gained experience you will be slow, and apt to tire a nervous sitter. Let the background be natural for choice ; and remember that the nearer your main object is to the camera the nearer will be the point beyond which objects are out of focus. As you will probably have to use a large aperture for the portrait exposure, the background must not be a very distant scene, if you want it very sharp. On the other hand, a distant object entirely out of focus will often make a very pleasant soft background of indefinite light and shade.

Artificial Background reflectors

A white sheet, a plain blanket and plain rugs obtainable in every household, give backgrounds of various tones, so that one can be chosen to suit any subject. Even an apron, or a focusing cloth, if held by an assistant close behind the sitter, may answer as a background. It is best to pin it to a broom handle or walking stick, so that it hangs flat. In some cases, especially in direct sunshine, there are heavy shadows under the eyes, nose and lower lip. These may be considerably lighted up by laying a few newspapers on the floor around the sitter.

Lighting the Sitter

The lighting must be chosen before the sitter is posed, or even the background selected. It is not well to place the sitter in sunshine, unless you have had much experience of this work (see later paragraph, however). With a generally diffused light, as from a lightly clouded or a grey sky, good portraits can be made almost anywhere, but even in these cases it is well to have something to give a little variety of light and shade to the face, and any building will do this. Suppose you want a full face portrait, with considerable contrast between the lighter and the darker sides of the face, place the sitter within two or three feet of the side of a house and with her shoulder toward the house. The house (of brick or stone) reflects very little light ; and the actinic difference will be more than the visual difference between the two sides of the face. Every foot that the sitter moves away from the house will make the shadow side lighter. For diffused front lighting, place the sitter with her back to the house and facing toward the most open part of the view. Remember that the more nearly you can see the horizon, the more diffused will be your light. The nearer you come to houses or trees, the stronger (proportionally) are your top-light and your top-light shadows. Note what was said in previous paragraph re reflectors.

In many cases a soft lighting of the face may be obtained even where the top-light is hard and concentrated, by simply letting the sitter wear a wide-brimmed hat, which takes off the harsh top-lighting and smooths out the wrinkles and shadows as if by magic. A white straw hat often lets through the brim and reflects from its under side just enough light to make a pleasant play.

Again, if your difficulty is that the contrast in lighting between the two sides of the face is too great, this may be overcome by hanging a white sheet (on a clothes-horse or from a broom handle laid on top of a pair of steps) or pinning a few newspapers to reflect light on to the shadow side of the face.

Sunlight portraits may be made very attractive if thoroughly well done, but they require much more careful handling than diffused light pictures. Few faces can stand the photographic effect of absolute sunlight, so that the best results will be secured if the hat, or convenient branch of tree or bush, is used to shade part, at any rate, of the face. The wide brimmed hat, thin white hat suggested in the last paragraph, is very convenient for sunshine work, and will give a shadow that makes a fresh bright face very interesting. With sunlight portraits the background needs careful consideration. It should not be too dark, to contrast harshly with the figure, and should not be too hard and spotty. For sunshine portraits it is well to use a backed plate, which should be very rapid but of considerable latitude (preferably double coated) ; and the exposure must be ample.