We are excited to present you this month's featured artist. Jenn Hicks stood out to us as an engaging member of our community and her full sun images are so very good. You can find her on instagram at @jennifersuephotography. See what she had to say to us!
Tell us about your photography journey...
Hey, y’all! So, my southern roots run deep. As a born and raised girl from northern Louisiana, and now a Texas lovin’, cowgirl-boot wearing wife and mom of two blue-eyed boys, you can almost always find me with a tall glass, a sweet tea in one hand and my camera in the other.
I’m also terribly nostalgic and embrace all the emotions that come with this crazy life. That girl crying during a Disney movie? Yep, that’s me. Laughing so hard I pee my pants? Also me.
I process the world through my emotions, and it’s in picture-taking that I’m able to see the world in a unique way: the moments that I know will be gone in a flash, but that I’ll want to hold onto tightly after they’ve past. From the amazing milestones in life, to the dark places where sadness pulls me under and all the little moments in between, I want to feel it all and remember it always.
I like to believe this is why my family first bought me a camera when I was just a little girl- they somehow knew I needed it, that my soul cried out for a way to remember. I captured my loving grandparents cooking in the hot kitchen, my sweet momma sitting out on the patio, me and my cousins playing for hours in the heat of summer with popsicle stains on our faces, and, in particular, an image of my father when he visited one Christmas evening.
I’m the product of a post-high school pregnancy and my father, being young and carefree at the time, didn’t want a child. He left my mom and I, and he started a new life, one where I was not invited. Around the holidays one year, he visited and brought me a Christmas present. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and, before he left, I snapped a photo of him with my new Polaroid camera, wanting to savor the incredibly dear moment and never forget it. I still have the photo to this day, kept safe in a little box along with other mementos.
It’s through images like these that I can trace my life- my joys, my pains, the good times and the sad. These little pieces of paper are powerful. They remind me who I am, where I’ve come from and where I want to go. This beautiful, and sometimes terribly painful, life is an extraordinary thing. It’s worthy of remembering.
This is why I still take pictures to this day, capturing as much as I can so I never forget.
What gear do you use?
I carry a 5D Mark III and have two lenses: 1) An economical EF 50mm 1.4 and 2) a dynamic EF 24-70mm 2.8.
What's your go to lens and why?
Indoor I use my 24-70mm due to its versatility. I need to be able to move around and don’t need the same depth of field as my 50mm. I take a lot of self portraits with my boys indoors and this lens is a great option for that.
Outdoors, I want a shallow depth of field, so I shoot with my 50 mm 1.4. It’s super economical and while I intend to upgrade one day, this baby does the job for now.
Who and what inspires you?
Because I’m incredibly nostalgic, I draw a lot of inspiration from my children, my own childhood memories, pretty much any music that gives me feels and books, particularly quotes and favorite characters. (My oldest son was Waldo for Halloween last year and that image is hands down one of my all-time favorites.)
I also have a running list of moments I want to capture or recreate with my boys, like swinging in the hammock summer after summer or remembering something funny they did and then recreating it in an artistic way.
I’m also inspired by photographers like Jenn Bartell, Meg Loeks and Kristen Ryan. These girls got skill, y’all.
What tips do you have for shooting in full sun?
I love shooting in full sun, but it is also one of the most difficult. As a homeschooling family, my boys and I are home more than many other school-age families. I don’t like being limited to only shooting indoors or at sunset or else we’d go crazy. Because of this, I’ve learned to embrace full sun in all its brightly lit goodness.
This is my process for shooting full sun (and it does require more post-processing than golden hour images for sure):
Plan for the shot
Know where the sun is in relation to your subject and change your positions as needed. I usually want the sun behind my back so that shadows from my subjects fall away from the camera. This also produces more vibrant skies, which I’m absolutely crazy about.
This image was taken with the sun behind me and my son, allowing for that amazing sky. Here’s a before and after. Settings: 24mm, ISO 200, f/2.8, 1/8000
Time of day: late morning and late afternoon will have the sun lower in the sky and will allow for less harsh light, although it’s still going to be bright, y’all. Midday is the harshest and will require even more in your post processing to decrease over-exposure (unless you’re all about that harsh light, then go for it!).
The image below was taken later in the afternoon when the sun was starting to lower and was able to be diffused by the trees while also still landing on my subjects. Settings: 50mm, ISO 200, f/1.4, 1/3200
Faceless images are a favorite in this setting because my subjects are not forced to squint and, you know, burn their eyes out.
Tricks for working around the sun
Find the shade! If you want to avoid harsh light but want to shoot during the day, find pockets of shade and place your subjects in them.
While my subjects are hanging out in the shade, you can see the harsh midday light in the background of this image. Settings: 24mm, ISO 400, f/2.8, 1/500
Watch the clouds. Clouds are a natural light diffuser. This image was taken on a very bright day (we were sweating our tails off) with clouds moving across the sky to diffuse the light a bit. Settings: 50mm, ISO 200, f/4.0, 1/500
Camera settings
When outdoors, I usually want a low depth of field so that means an f/stop of 1.4-2.8 but when shooting full sun, you may need to bring that aperture higher to 3.5 or so. With all that bright sun, you’ll also need to compensate with a low ISO and high shutter speed.
If you don’t want to sacrifice depth of field, be prepared for extra post-processing to make up for blown highlights and over exposed skin tone.
This image needed quite a bit of work to make up for the over-exposure. It’s one of my favorites so it was worth it. It was taken in the middle of the day, so the sun was extra harsh and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. (I used an sky overlay.) Here’s a before and after. Settings: 50mm, ISO 200, f/1.4, 1/8000
Post processing
This step is super important when shooting full sun. Here is my usual process in Lightroom, not including additional editing.
Basic menu
Decrease exposure as much as possible while maintaining proper skin tone.
Lots of contrast +40 or more (full sun images tend to be flat).
Decrease highlights as much as needed to avoid clipping and over exposure while maintaining skin tone.
Gradient filter
Many of my full sun images include a large sky and because of this, I use gradient filters to enhance all my skies.
Radial filter
When there is an area in my image that clearly shows the direction of the sun, I’ll enhance that with a radial filter to draw the viewer’s eye toward my subject. I’ll also sometimes darken other areas with a gradient filter to create more depth.
For example: in the image below, I applied a radial filter to the upper left edge of the image and drug it down toward my subjects. Then I applied a gradient filter to the right edge to darken the image and draw your eye back toward my boys. Settings: 50 mm, ISO 200, f/1.8, 1/8000
Brushes
Often times skin can be overly exposed in full sun images so I’ll apply a few brushes if that’s the case, decreasing exposure and highlights a bit more while being careful not to make the skin appear darker than the subject’s clothes or immediate surroundings.
I also edit my images in photoshop and will apply a sky overlay to my full sun images if the sky is too clear and/or too bright that detail from clouds are lost to the brightness.
The careful thing to remember about sky overlays is to take your time and be precise with your brushes. Zoom way in and zoom out, back and forth, to make sure your edges, and therefore you image, look clean.
Here’s another before and after. This image was taken at midday with harsh light. Settings: 50mm, ISO 200, f/1.4, 1/8000
What full sun image are you most proud of and/or love the most and why?
The image above of me and my oldest son in the Texas wildflowers is one of my all-time favorite images, not just for full sun, but in general. It was such a beautiful day, just me and my boys out for a little road trip. This image was super hard to nail, but we had such a good time together, driving along, singing songs, eating Dairy Queen, and stopping for pictures whenever we felt like it. It also happened to be the day right before Teas locked down due to Covid-19. I’ll never forget this day, and I have two beautiful images to remember it by now. (Scroll up for the other image of a self-portrait in the same wildflower field.)
Here are a few more full sun images.
The first one is another example of finding the shade during midday.
The second is a wide angle shot in one of our favorite places at the peak of day. The sky was so clear I applied a sky overlay so there’s a before and after of this one as well.
The last one is my youngest son playing in our backyard with the sun shining bright from the west. I enhanced this image with a gradient and radial filter to add depth.
