I was wondering how to get a nice, fresh, porcelain skin picture in full sun. I recently took a little girl out to practice and placed her everywhere I could... with the sun behind her, with the sun to the side of her....and in each picture, one side of her face is brightly lit and there is a shadow on the other side of her face.If I had put her directly in front of the sun, she would have sqinted too much. I have seen pictures where the subject's face is just flawless... like porcelain and no shadows, but it looks as if they were shot in full sun.... How do you do this? Get that flawless, no shadow on one side of the face look?

I'm no expert, but thos who get this effect in what seems like full sun all use reflectors, and I have no idea about positioning.

Photoshop?!  LOL!   

I'm sure Photoshop will do it, but if I don't know the steps to take, then I'm still stuck

Look for "open shade"

and visit the summer school lessons #5 and #7 in the tutorial sub forum of "Digital Photoaphy" below.

Also in addition to the reflectors (which you just have to experiement with) you can use a low-med diffused fill flash with your camera settings on slave...this will make the lighted side not blown with the shadows mostly gone.  Your best results would be in open shade with a reflector in the sun shining onto your subject.  Pretty much it takes more than you to do it and it's alot of work and experiementing.  Keep trying...it can be done.

Are you looking for something like this? Sorry it posted the photo twice. It will only post with two photos or none.

" mce_src="">

This was done in full sun on a hot day in June. I used a diffusion panel made of white ripstop nylon above her. There is a person on each side of her holding it up. I also used an off camera flash to  add the highlight to her left side and to bring her level of exposure up to match the background (in full sun).

thanks everyone!

Open shade. You have to have your subject without any direct sunlight on them.

Now you will have a dark shaded subejct and a bright background. In order to get the two closer together in exposure range you will need to add more light to the shaded subject (or you would expose for the subject and blow out your background). You can do this with reflectors or flash. Make sure if you do fill flash that you are using a good modifier. If you need a lot of flash, you will want it off camera and diffused with umbrella or softbox.  

I prefer my whole image to be in the shade. Then I don't have to artifically light my subject and maintain proper exposure on both subject and background.

 diffusers are great, but only if you have an assistant. I mostly shoot alone, so that does not work for me that often, so shade shade shade. Its really hard sometimes, then use fill flash when you can to get rid of those shadows.