How do I photograph someone standing in front of a bright window?

Backlighting is not a fault to be corrected — it is the most common lighting situation in a home and it can be beautiful. The problem is only that the camera does not know which of the two brightnesses you care about.

Step by step

1. Decide what the photograph is of.A portrait with a white window behind it is a perfectly good photograph. A view with a silhouetted figure is also a good photograph. Trying to have both, without adding light, produces a grey compromise where neither works.
2. Meter for the face.Spot meter on the face, or tap it on a phone, then add exposure compensation until the skin looks right. The window will blow out to white and that is the correct outcome — a white window reads as bright daylight and nobody objects to it.
3. Move the subject rather than the camera.Turning them ninety degrees so the window lights them from the side, with the camera also turned, converts a hard problem into the best light in the house. This is the fix that costs nothing and improves the picture most.
4. Bounce light back into the face.White card, a white wall opposite, or a sheet held just out of frame reflects window light back onto the shadow side. A metre from the face this can lift it by a stop or more — often enough to hold both the view and the subject.
5. Add a little fill flash.Flash at one to two stops below full output raises the face to meet the background. Bounce it if there is a white ceiling; otherwise direct at reduced power, which is one of the few cases where direct flash is right.
6. Commit to the silhouette when it suits.Expose for the window, let the figure go black, and make sure the outline is clean — a recognisable profile, arms away from the body, nothing merging into the edges. A deliberate silhouette is far stronger than a rescued half-lit face.
7. Watch for flare and haze.Pointing towards a bright window puts light directly into the lens. A hood helps, shielding the front element with a hand helps more, and a cheap protective filter will make it dramatically worse. Take the filter off.
8. Let the merged exposure help, with limits.A phone's automatic merging often holds both, and it will lift the face by pulling shadows hard. Check the result for a flat grey face with a halo around the head — that is the merge failing, and adding real light is the answer.

Tips

• Blown-out white behind a subject is a legitimate photographic look and always has been. Grey, muddy, half-recovered highlights are not.
• Backlight through hair produces a rim of light that separates the subject from the background. Position for it deliberately.
• If you can, shoot when the window is not in direct sun — bright overcast through a window gives a far more manageable brightness range.

Common mistakes

• Letting the camera decide and then brightening in editing — A face recorded three stops dark contains mostly noise in the shadows. Lifting it produces a mottled, colour-shifted result. Getting light onto the face at the time gives a clean file from the same camera.
• Using a wide-angle lens close to a backlit subject — It includes far more of the bright window in the frame, which makes the metering problem larger and the flare worse. Step back and use a longer focal length.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask