The Backlit Group Photo Problem, and How to Fix It
Okay. We've done grid lines, we've done backgrounds. Today we're doing light again, but a specific kind of light problem, the one that ruins more family photos than anything else I know of.
Here's the scene. Everybody's gathered around the table, or standing in the living room, and there's a big window or a sliding door behind them. You lift the phone, everyone smiles, you take the shot. And when you look at it later, everyone's a dark shape. A silhouette. You can maybe tell who's who by the outline, but you can't see a single face.
That's backlighting. The light source is behind your subject instead of in front of them, so the phone exposes for the bright window and everyone in front of it goes dark. It happens constantly and it's not your fault when it does, your phone is just trying to make sense of a scene with a huge difference between the brightest part and the darkest part. It usually guesses wrong.
Why this one is so common
Think about where people naturally gather. Kitchen tables, living rooms, front porches. Rooms have windows, and windows let in a lot of light. If you're standing with your back to the window taking the photo, you've got the good light hitting your subjects' faces and everything's fine. But if you're standing where the window is behind the people you're photographing, you've set up the exact problem.
I do this all the time, or I did before I figured it out. I had a family dinner, everybody gathered around the table, big sliding door behind them out to the backyard. Lifted the phone, took the shot, and got a table full of silhouettes against a glowing white rectangle. Every single person. I moved everybody to the other side of the table so the door was behind me instead of behind them, reshot it, and it worked immediately. Same people, same dinner, same phone. The only thing that changed was which direction the light was coming from.
I talk about this one a lot in class because it happens to nearly everyone, and the fix is almost embarrassingly simple once you see it.
The fix, step by step
- Notice where the light is before you lift the phone. Look for windows, doors, lamps. Anything bright.
- If the light is behind your subject, move. Either move the people, or move yourself. You want the light source behind you, the photographer, not behind them.
- If you truly can't move anyone (big group, awkward room, grandma's not getting up), tap on a face to focus and set exposure there instead of letting the phone average the whole scene. That'll brighten the faces even with the window still bright behind them. It won't be perfect, the window might blow out to white, but you'll actually see people.
- Take the second photo. The first one almost never nails it once you've moved everybody around. Reshoot.
An opinion while we're here
Light is the whole game. I say that every module because it keeps being true. Ninety percent of a bad photo is bad light, not a bad camera, and this backlit group shot is the clearest example of that I can give you. Nobody's phone is broken. Nobody needs a better camera. You just need the light coming from the right direction.
A smaller version of the same lesson
I noticed this same light problem in a place I didn't expect it. I got a batch of deadstock fabric a while back, mill ends and seconds, and I was cataloging it, photographing each piece so I'd know what I actually had. Nothing fancy, just documentation. But I caught myself moving each piece to the window, checking the light, reshooting the ones that looked flat. I was more careful with two dollar a yard fabric than I've been with plenty of family photos over the years. Which tells you something. It's not that the fabric mattered more. It's that I wasn't rushing, and I was actually paying attention to where the light was falling. That's the whole trick, for fabric or for people. Slow down enough to notice the light before you shoot instead of after.
A caution
If you're outside and the sun's the light source behind your subject, don't have people turn and look straight into it to fix it. Squinting into direct sun is uncomfortable and nobody photographs well mid-squint. Better to move the group so the sun's off to the side, lighting faces at an angle, rather than dead ahead or dead behind.
Before next time
Find one backlit photo already sitting in your camera roll, the silhouette kind, and see if you can tell me where the light was coming from. Then go take a new one of the same kind of scene and fix it.