The Most Beautiful Portrait Light

Today’s Post by Mark Toal

I was babysitting my granddaughter last week when she decided that she needed to look out the window while standing on the couch. The soft light coming in from the shady backyard lit her face perfectly. Before Lightroom and Photoshop came along I would have preferred to have a reflector on the side of her face away from the window. Now with software you can adjust the highlights and shadows to help balance the light without a reflector.

I choose the Leica 25mm f/1.4 lens to use with my Lumix GX85 since I needed a fairly high shutter speed with a moving 15-month old and I wanted shallow depth-of-field for this image. I set the camera to the face tracking focusing mode so it would stay focused on her eyes.

In Lightroom I adjusted the highlights and shadows, reduced the clarity to slightly soften the skin and sharpened for the eyes.