Here is another one of my favorite locations for photo shoots. This one is at at my friends hobby farm in Cottage Grove. The day we planned for was supposed to be cloudy which is my favorite type of weather for natural lighting. I was a little disappointed when I woke up and saw that the sun was shining bright. As much as I love the sun, it can be very challenging for photos especially during the middle of the day when the sun is at it’s highest. It is a good thing that I love a challenge.

For Harper’s photo shoot we walked around the property looking for areas that have the most interesting backgrounds and where I could work around the bright sun. When working a photo shoot on a sunny day, you want to make sure that the sun is not facing your subject. As you can see in the example below, it causes eye squinting, dark shadows around the eyes and an overexposed (very bright) face.

To adjust for the brightness of the sun, Harpers photos were all shot with either the sun behind her or to the left or right of her. If you look at the brightest spots on her hair, that will tell you the direction the sun is facing. You can see that she is not squinting and there are no dark shadows around her eyes.

Finding areas that the sun is being blocked by a building can work well too as you can see in the photo with the wagon wheel. The building behind her was blocking the sun which created a small area that we could use to get nice lighting.

The main reason we chose the hobby farm was for the ponies and the goats. Harper had never met a pony or goat before so this was a new experience for her. She was a natural once she got used to them. Daisy the pony and Flirt the goat were not quite as cooperative as Harper. You can’t tell in the photos but we struggled quite a bit. We had lots of retakes but managed to get some great shots.

Thank you for checking out my blog. Please reach out through the “contact me” page if you are interested in setting up a photo session or would like more information.