They say “Never Shoot into the Sun”. Well, who the heck are ‘THEY’ anyway?
Actually, I can tell you. They are the same ones who tell you that overcast days provide the best natural light for portraits. ‘THEY’ are the teachers of safe, easy, no-risk photography – and they are actually giving good advice!
When you begin learning how to take photos of people it’s best to start in these ‘low-risk’ lighting conditions while you start to understand the use of your camera and how light works to best flatter your subjects. You can take technically sound photos without worrying too much about light.
But like so many rules, these ones are made to be broken. In fact I shoot into the sun all the time. It’s one of my favourite ways to use sunlight – one of my biggest photography inspirations!
As a photographer learns and grows in the art of portraiture, they’ll learn to work in lots of different lighting conditions, and indeed how to create more beautiful images by using beautiful light.
Now don’t get me wrong, you actually can’t just point your camera and shoot straight into the sun. You have to know a few things, like those listed below:
1) Where to put your portrait subjects in relation to the sun and background:
- Put your subjects to one side or the other of the sun! Avoid having them directly in front of the sun. You’ll also want to avoid having the brightly lit sky right behind the subjects heads so that you won’t lose the shapes of their heads and hairstyles into the light!
2) How diffusion of that big light in the sky works:
- It’s usually best to diffuse a strong sun somehow – I usually use sparse trees, or you can block part of the sun with a building, structure or denser tree to lessen it’s strength.
3) What times of days and year it works and doesn’t work:
- Shooting into the sun is most difficult/least recommended when the sun is at it’s strongest and highest – this happens midday and for a window around midday. This window is longer in the summer and shorter in the winter.
4) The BIG one… how to properly light and expose your subjects:
- You need to expose for your subjects, as always, but since the light behind them will be so much brighter your camera will want to expose for that, making your subjects too dark. You’ll want to both add light to your subjects (reflection or artificial light) and increase your exposure to make sure your subjects look great!
This is a lot of info – but take it one step at a time and get out there and shoot. Practice makes perfect!
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