Jon Haase harnesses Hawaii's light with the Tamron SP 70-200mm VC lens.

By Jenn Gidman
Images by Jon Haase

Jon Haase has moved more than a dozen times in the last 15 years, and he now finds himself situated in one of the most stunning places on Earth: Honolulu, Hawaii. Not only is it a gorgeous place for Jon to raise his three young children, but it's also an ideal locale for the backlit portraits he specializes in. "I love taking pictures of people and helping bring out something special in their lives," says Jon, who uses the Tamron SP 70-200mm VC lens for his portraiture. "And the sunsets in Hawaii are killer. It's a great time of day to do portrait photography."

Read on for descriptions of how Jon achieves his signature backlit photos.

It's wonderful to be able to take advantage of those Hawaii sunsets to create my backlit portraits. A co-worker had said my 3-year-old daughter looks like an angel and suggested I photograph her actually dressed as an angel, which I thought was brilliant. So I bought her the angel outfit with the wings and the harp and brought her down to the beach at sunset to capture her as the light glowed behind her.

The 70-200's F/2.8 aperture allowed me to shoot wide open and blur out the background, so you still get a sense of where she is on the beach, but the focus is on her and her expressions, all enhanced by that warm end-of-day light. Taking pictures of her is usually next to impossible—she's a wild child, Japanese is her first language (I don't speak Japanese), and she's really stubborn—so I was happy with the way these angel images came out.

Although sunrise and sunset are obviously A-plus times to do backlit photography, you can get terrific images during the middle of the day, too, as long as you're not in direct overhead light.

I was doing a family session when I asked the mom and dad if they wanted to do some couple shots. We were in the woods, so the background was shaded, the foreground was shaded, but shafts of light were coming through the trees. If you're in that lighting situation, position your subject facing toward you on an angle facing you, with that shaft of light coming through the trees across the back of the shoulder and the back of the hair a little bit (you don't want the sun on your subject's face). You'll get a rim light or hairlight just on that part; you then expose for the face and the background and get beautiful highlights where the sun is backlighting just that one part.

For this particular image, because there was really soft light, I used an umbrella and added a little fill light. But because the light in the woods was really green, I shot with a gray card and also created a custom color profile in my camera with a color-calibration product that calibrates all my color channels and color-balances everything.

Another example of backlit photography without a strobe, just using natural light and shade and selectively blending them, is an image I recently took of my friend Emily. You can see the natural backlight coming in from her back and along her side, against the shaded background—once again showing you don't need to wait till the end of the day for optimal lighting.

We have two dogs, including Hobbes, a rescue dog we got in North Carolina before we moved here. I love taking dog photos, because dogs—like children—don't fake anything. You can't make dogs look engaged or interested; they either are or they aren't.

I had wanted to take Hobbes to the beach one morning to take some pictures, but I woke up too late, so we headed out under the trees in my backyard instead. Again, like the couple I described previously, there was a golden shaft of light coming through an opening in the trees. That's the type of backlighting or sidelighting you want to look for and take advantage of. I shot wide open at F/2.8 at a longer focal length and was able to create that beautiful bokeh, with Hobbes as the focus and everything else in the background dropping off so nicely.

I always try to keep an open eye for creative, interesting pictures. I looked outside where my middle daughter was playing on one of the windiest days I've ever seen in Hawaii. There were these palm fronds that had fallen on the ground from the wind and dried out; they looked like witches' brooms, so my daughter and her friends were outside pretending they were witches. I figured if she was being so creative, I was going to take advantage of it. I realized if I had her jump, and the wind was blowing through her hair, it would look like she was flying on a broomstick.

I positioned myself so the light would come across her shoulders while she was in the shade—I wanted the foreground and background in the same dynamic range as her. I also did one in which she had backlit sunlight coming in on her side. There's a little coaching I had to do, because when you jump, your body looks different than if you were pretending to fly on a broom. I had her hold the broom handle a little higher and lean forward just a bit more, then jump as I pressed the shutter. I didn't have to choreograph the whole thing, but I was able to put all the pieces together, including the lighting I wanted, till it all looked right.

My eldest son is 10. There's something about a boy that age as he starts to transition into being a young adult: He still has this vulnerability, but he's coming into adult realizations, which makes for sweet portraits.

Although I enjoy backlighting with flash and strobes, I wanted to try and use window lighting inside the house for this photo. I told my son to pull up a chair and turn it backward and sit in it. I asked him to pull his knee up, so that the line of his leg to his face creates a wonderful continuity and line that draws the viewer into his face and eyes. The light coming in from the window on his left side was all I needed to achieve this shot.

To see more of Jon Haase's work, go to www.bhcportraitphotography.com.