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Taking Photos Into the Sun

Some people avoid taking photos into the sun. Granted, you never know quite what’s going to happen, but sometimes it’s interesting to try it just to see.

We climbed Kuju Mountain, a volcano in Southern Japan the other day, and this shot is an example of my rashness when it comes to taking photos into the sun. The sulfur vents happened to be in that direction, so I just pointed my camera and started shooting.

By some standards this picture is a disaster. The foreground is underexposed, and the sky overexposed, but personally I’m pleased with the result. The underexposure of the the forground makes it look harsh and moonlike, and serves to emphasize the wildly billowing steam from the Kuju sulfer vents, and the round white spot where the camera just couldn’t handle the intense sunlight helps to capture the brilliance of a sunny afternoon at high altitude.

These sulfur vents at Kuju are famous even in Japan. The sulfur comes out of holes in the volcano as super heated steam and forms intricate bright yellow stalactites at the vent openings. These are harvested, ground into powder and sold as bath salts, but it’s a dangerous job to get them, and strictly off limits to the public. One deep breath of the volcano steam could be fatal.

But I digress. We were talking about taking photos into the sun. Try it. You may be pleasantly surprised at the result.

Taking Pictures on Overcast Days

You’ve planned a photo shoot for weeks, only to find that you’ve hit on one of those dark and gloomy overcast days. Cloudy days can be a real problem to an outdoor photographer, but don’t despair. There are several things you can do to make the best of a cloudy days disaster.

* If you must go on that outing and shoot outdoor scenery, try to avoid shots that include the sky. You’ll find the colors of leaves, trees and rockseven richer and more vibrant in the diffused light on overdast days that in the direct sunlight.

* When taking pictures on overcast days pay extra attention to the colors, shapes and shadows in your compositions. Try some black and white visualization to force yourself to see shapes as well as tonality, or light contrast. The extra challenge overcast days offer can actually be a boost to your creativity.

* Diffused light is beautiful. People tend to look their best in diffused light, so cloudy days are a great opportunity to turn your camera away from that panoramic scene you were planning to shoot and point it at the people you are with. You will have ideal conditions to take portraits without the squinting you have to deal with on sunny days, and red-eye you have to deal with at night. If you tend to take a lot of portraits, you will find yourself looking forward to taking pictures on overcast days.

* If the conditions are very dark, remember to take a tripod. You’ll find you’re taking longer exposures than usual in the diffused light, and will tend to have trouble holding the camera still.

* One other option may be to set up a tiny table-top studio in the garage or the spare room and work with still lifes. That series of cloudy days could be a huge boost to your knowledge and skill in artificial lighting and reflexive surfaces.

Taking pictures on overcast days can be a challenge, but with a bit of practice and creative thinking you may find that you actually prefer them.

Manipulating Exposure Settings

The light sensors and exposure settings for a pocket camera or cell phone camera don’t give much freedom of expression. They are great for shooting real images, but are very limiting as far as manipulating exposure settings to create an art photo.

Here’s a really clever way my daughter, Elizabeth Laurel, found to get an effect for an art photo she wanted that seemed impossible with the limited equipment she had. I would never have thought of manipulating exposure settings in this way.

Elizabeth writes:

As an artist, I tend to want to make anything and everything into art, including the real-life photos that I take. I took a couple of art photos like this one with my cell phone camera a few years ago. There was a trend in fine art at the time, to use harsh color contrasts, with a lot of black and white. Shadows and silhouettes were often used to create a mood that couldn’t be grasped with the true depiction of an object.

For this picture I worked with my hands. Pointing my cell phone camera in the direction of the sun, I started with my hand cupped over the lens, then took my hand off and watched the screen for the second and a half or less that it took for the light to fade into the scene. I then pressed the trigger before the light completely enveloped the picture, all the while taking in to account the little less than a second pause between the time I pushed the trigger and the time the photo would actually take. This isn’t the most graceful way to take a picture but it’s very rewarding.

Thanks, Elizabeth for a great art photo taken with your cell phone camera, and a truly innovative method of manipulating exposure settings!

Light and Shadow in Photography

Never underestimate the importance of light and shadow in photography. Light and shadow can make all the difference in your photo, and sometimes can even be the subject of your composition.

I was traveling with some friends on a very serious historical tour when I took this shot. We were studying the Shimabara Massacre when hundreds of thousands of Catholic Christians were killed in the 16th century, and walking from church to museum to see the actual sites where these things took place. I was supposed to be pondering said horrific event when I walked past this bicycle shadow and noticed the play of light and shadow. It was as if the board had been placed there as a canvas for the bicycle shadow. Alas, my friends had to stand there and wait while I took several shots of an old and ratty piece of blue plaster board with a bicycle shadow imprinted on it.

I was reminded how important it can be to keep your eyes open and stop to take a picture even when it’s not appropriate. That’s the photo lifestyle. This example of light and shadow in photography is one of my favorites. I think the late afternoon sun was more intense because we were standing at the edge of an ocean inlet, and the light was bouncing off of the water as well. Perhaps this bicycle shadow wouldn’t have been so pronounced a bit further away from the water.

Try paying more attention to light and shadow in photography today. You might just be walking right past one of your best shots.

God Made Morning Light for Photographers

I thought my friend was crazy. Wild horses weren’t going to get me up at 6am to go walking. She wasn’t only crazy, she was persistent. After three years she finally wore me down, and I agreed, only for three times a week, of course. What kind of torture would it be to roll out of bed while it was still dark on Thursdays?

I’ve been doing this for a few weeks, now, and am beginning to see some benefits other than stamina, weight loss and general self discipline. As we were driving home this morning, a strong, focused sun was just coming over the hills in the east. We drove past a row of what I would have taken for sunflowers, except they were pink. (And blooming in November – Sunflowers don’t usually do that.) They were about 7 feet high, and I was able to crouch down and take this photo with the early morning sky in the background. The intense sunlight acts like a spotlight in a studio, and shows every detail of these mysterious flowers.

I know all the photography books say morning light is best, but I hadn’t paid much attention. If that meant getting up early, I’d settle for second best, but I’m beginning to realize the difference is too significant to ignore. There’s a lot to be said for morning sun.
I’ll be getting up to take pictures early more often, even though a huge part of me still agrees with Garfield.

By the way, does anyone know what these flowers are? They’re large, about 8in. across, and were about 7 feet tall.