Need advise on Catchlights

[Starla]

Hello everyone!!

Here is a photo that I recently took of a friend... I used my 600 Nikon Speedlite,, attached to the camera and the catchlights are tiny. How do I acheive better catchlights when doing outside photoshoots?



Please feel free to give any other feedback.

Thank you!
Starla

[Melissa]

It looks like your photo has pin dots from your speedlite, so I think in order to avoid that, since you were outdoors, you probably could have used a reflector to fill in the shadows and the light bouncing off the reflector would have made better catchlights in her eyes. If you don't want to pay a lot for a reflector, you could buy a large piece of foam core board.

Here hair on her left side also looks a little blown, so maybe in the event of harsh sun, look for a place near that is in open shade.

[Robin E.]

I'm a newbie at catchlights, but I've been having good success the last couple of months by taking outside photos with both me and the subject in full shade and the subject looking out toward where the shade is not (but not looking directly into the sun). This photo was taken in such a way.

We were sitting under a roofed but open on two sides area at the fair grounds. We were both in the shade, but I had him look out toward the sunny area. By the way, he isn't really squinting in the photo although it looks like it may be that way. That semi-squint look is how he always looks; he gets it from my husband's side of the family.