Sometimes, when we are on holiday or on a day out, we end up shooting in the midday sun. That can be challenging to do and sometimes we are disappointed in the photos we get – harsh shadows, glare and often very contrasty.
This happened to me earlier this week – on a social trip to Audley End with a student the weather changed from overcast and drizzle to bright blue skies. We also managed to arrive at midday accidentally.
So whilst it was lovely to wander the gardens in sunshine it meant taking photos had to have a slightly different approach.
First I always find some shade:
- Flowers, especially, shoot better in indirect light and when the colours are deeper like this dahlia it adds more atmosphere.
- If there’s no shade – stand in front of your subject with the light behind you, if possible, to create it as I did for the blue flower
- Where there’s shade there are also likely to be shadows – in the case of this tree I exposed for the bright areas beyond the tree and then adjusted the shadows afterwards. That way I didn’t end up with such a contrasty image or lose detail in the brighter areas
- I look for things that are in pockets of light, like this fern. Again I exposed for the fern and adjusted the shadows afterwards
Secondly I underexpose the image:
- As above I expose for the brightest thing in the picture which will make the darker areas much darker – but then I adjust the shadows afterwards to balance the image.
- This is especially useful when you have really bright subjects – like buildings with white walls.
- To use this either use your exposure compensation setting (both on cameras and smartphones) and/or;
- Use spot metering to tell the camera the most important part of the image to be correctly exposed. On your smartphone just tap the area you want to expose correctly before shooting.
Failing that head indoors and shoot out through some windows! Use spot metering to expose the window correctly.
In any event if you’re out to capture your day then just do that and capture your memories!
