Photographing dark skin people

Here's an example of a back-lit shot. Do I really care about the clipped highlights? Nope. No fill flash on this one.

That makes more sense to me this is more of a candid shoot for her and not really anything other then her wanting some great pictures of her and her bf I just want to make sure to give her the best quality of photos I can

Charles Tillman of the Chicago Bears is dark. here he s with a fair skinned kid that was in the hospital...

TooManyShots wrote in post #14979314
Is the color of the clothing. If the dynamic range is too great between the skin color and the color of the clothing, you have to decide where to expose. Your worst case is obviously a very dark skin person dresses in white. In that case, I would probably expose the clothing but overexposing 1 to 2 stops. Without some sorts of fill light (from the strobe or indirect natural light), the person's face would look dark.

Most of the shots I've been posting have zero supplemental lighting. No reflectors. Just available light. Unless the sun is just beaming down on the dress, it's not a big deal.

When I mention expose for the dress, the "overexposing" part is already taken into account, but yes, you would typically dial in EC in some fashion (EC dial in Av. or shooting a stop or two to the right of center in M)

airfrogusmc wrote in post #14979332
Charles Tillman of the Chicago Bears is dark. here he s with a fair skinned kid that was in the hospital...

Go Bears....

Cool.

Williammontgomery1 wrote in post #14979330
That makes more sense to me this is more of a candid shoot for her and not really anything other then her wanting some great pictures of her and her bf I just want to make sure to give her the best quality of photos I can

Again, decide on what's most important, and nail the exposure for that. Also reflectors might make your subjects squint, so watch out for that.

I think this one goes to CDI's point. If you light properly (or have normal lighting) then the exposure is about the same, regardless of skin color. It's only when you have harsh, difficult lighting that it can be a challenge to get the whole spectrum exposed well.

airfrogusmc wrote in post #14979332
Charles Tillman of the Chicago Bears is dark. here he s with a fair skinned kid that was in the hospital...

Go Bears....

Place the skin tones however light or dark you want them and you should be able to control that with exposure and or supplemental lighting.

nicksan wrote in post #14979362
Again, decide on what's most important, and nail the exposure for that. Also reflectors might make your subjects squint, so watch out for that.

Exactly...

Thank you everyone for the great advice please keep going if there is any more

Just as a Scandanavian bride in white bridal gown can fool the reflected light meter into suggesting less exposure than 'proper', and just as a Nigerian groom in black tux can fool the reflected light meter into suggesting too much exposure for 'proper' exposure, you simply need to meter an 18% grey card and use the suggested meter reading with that to shoot your dark skinned target. Then your subject will be exposed at his/her inherent skin tonality, not a pasty 18% tonality (white cat exposed as 18% grey, or black cat exposed as 18% grey).

It might be necessary to provide a bit more fill so that shadow areas are not lost, but filling in shadows doesn't inherently alter the overall exposure, it merely reduces the dynamic range of the shot.

Well said Wilt....

Israel Idonije Chicago Bears from an event I shot last night. He is very dark...

More example. A small art gallery event I did for the bike messenger community. Ceiling bounce flash with a white index card, ETTL.

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

This was under overcast skies.
There's a bridesmaid with darker skin in the group, however I always expose for the white dress.

Well I'm on my way to do the shoot today will post some pictures in a couple of days thank you everyone for the help and advice