Photography in Sunlight
Photography is all about light, the direction of the light falling on
your subject is most important, you need to look at your subject carefully
and watch how the shadows fall.
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If you are able to choose the time of day to shoot your pictures,
try to pick a time when the sun is low in the sky, either shoot
in the early morning or late afternoon. Shooting pictures of people
with the sun too high in the sky, tends to mean the subject's
eyes will be in shadow and/or they will be squinting in the strong
light, both of which tend to look horrible. A nice side effect
of shooting in the early morning or late afternoon is that the
color of the light is 'warmer', reds and yellows are stronger
which generally gives a more pleasing effect.
If you are photographing in sunlight, try to position yourself so that
the sun hits your subject from the side, this will give you nice 'modeling'
and help create a 3D effect in the picture.
Sunlight behind the subject can give a very pleasing 'backlight' effect
but be careful that you are not getting 'flare' in the lens, which degrades
the contrast of the image. |
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A picture taken in the middle of the day, the overhead sun casts
deep shadows into the kids' eyes, spoiling an otherwise quite nice
little group portrait.
The metering system has exposed
for the highlights, as it should, and allowed the shadow
areas to be under exposed. There is just too much contrast
in the scene for the camera to cope. A professional would lighten the shadows using a Lighting Reflector like this.
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This picture was taken at the same time as the one
on the left but here the sun is behind the subject. The metering
system has done it's stuff and rendered correctly exposed faces.
The highlights of the hair and background are burnt out but, I
think in this instance, it gives quite a pleasing effect. |
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| An example of side lighting, taken late in the afternoon the side
lighting 'models' the surfer well and pulls him away from the background.
Also the late sun gives a warmer light. |
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| A backlit shot of a dog shaking off water makes an interesting 'pattern'
picture. Don't be frightened to face the sun but watch out
for lens flare which degrades the contrast of the image, see
below. Either use a lens hood or make sure the angle of the
camera is not too close to the sun. |
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Backlighting can wreak havoc on a bad hair day!
Although there is a tiny bit of flare in this picture softening
the dressing gown in the bottom right corner, it is of an acceptable
level. |
Moving round a little puts the sun too close to the edge of the
frame and causes nasty flare as seen in the rainbow colored streaks
above, note how the contrast of the image is much softer.
As with all 'mistakes' in photography, you can use this flare to
great effect with the right subject. |
Of course you can take pictures on cloudy days as well. If you live in
northern, less sunny climates, then you may have to. I, personally,
find that shooting landscapes or wide shots in cloudy weather
is usually not very satisfying. This, I stress, is a very personal
thing, some people love the softer light that you get on cloudy
days. Indeed on stormy days the sky can be quite dramatic, as
can shots taken in the rain.
When I wrote this sitting in my apartment in
southern Spain, by 'northern climates' I meant rainy old England,
Belgium, Germany etc so imagine my surprise when I received an
email from Greenland
putting me right on how lovely and sunny it is up there. Have
a look.
What I do find cloudy days useful for is shooting close-ups of people
or small objects, the reduced contrast is much easier for the camera's
metering system to handle, so exposure will be spot on and there will
be plenty of detail in both the highlights and the shadows.
With a little magic in Photoshop the contrast of a 'flat' picture can
be built up, to some extent, but it is not really possible to
make a dull day look sunny.
To learn more try this
book
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