Bright sun-filled days are great for a trip to the beach but when it comes to outdoor photography, well, not so much. These high-contrast situations make it very difficult to capture impressive images, whether you’re shooting nature scenes, landscapes, sports photos, or even environmental portraits without supplemental light.
Instructor Jalen Oban is a successful outdoor photographer and educator with the beautiful Pacific Northwest as his playground. The point of today’s episode in this: “Shooting in harsh sunlight can be tricky, but it doesn’t have to ruin your photos.”
In barely five minutes Oban demonstrates his go-to techniques for capturing compelling photos when the sun is at its brightest. He quickly covers a wide-range topics, from managing shadows and highlights to retain detail, working with different camera angles, and using lens filters to make the most of these difficult lighting conditions.
Oban explains the importance of paying close attention to the camera’s histogram when shooting at midday, and how this graphic tool can help you nail the exposure. He says that “instead of exposing for your subject like in most scenarios, we want to expose for the highlights.”
Doing this carefully enables you darken the scene without blowing out the sky or other bright portions of a shot. You can always open up shadows during post-processing, but it’s impossible to recover details in highlights that are totally devoid of information. A good practice when editing such images is to increase the exposure and shadows while lowering the highlights.
One editing trick is using the Dehaze slider to counter atmospheric haze that often occurs in bright midday light. And you can apply Dehaze to the entire photo or take a more targeted, selective approach with simple masking.
At this point the video is at it’s midpoint are there are a number of other effective tips for managing harsh light—both on location in the camera and during the image-editing process. Another interesting suggestion is to shoot and process images in b&w for reasons that make a lot of sense.
Keeping the composition simple and avoiding unnecessary clutter is another way to make successful images under less-than-deal conditions, as is looking for abstract shots while concentrating on captivating small details instead of shooting expansive vistas. His other tricks are just as easy and effective to accomplish.
Oban’s instructional YouTube channel is a great source of helpful videos, so be sure to pay a visit when you have time to explore.
And on a related topic, don’t miss the earlier tutorial we featured in which another expert demonstrates how to rehabilitate dull and lifeless landscape photographs by using color Range Masks in Lightroom.
Landscape photographers are barraged by a bunch of “conventional rules,” but here’s the deal: Many of these widely accepted guidelines may be conventional, but they’re not always the best way to proceed—especially when it comes to composing outdoor scenes with wide-angle lenses.
Instructor Martin Castein is a London-based pro who explains his goal for today’s tutorial like this: “In this video I’m going to teach you a very old compositional technique that creates instant impact in your images—especially when you’re using a wide-angle lens like a 16-35mm zoom.
No, it’s not the Rule of Thirds, emphasizing a compelling foreground element, or any of the other techniques you’ve heard about in the past. In fact, Castein kicks of this interesting episode by demonstrating how conventional framing methods will often let you down. That’s because they may lead to unbalanced compositions that aren’t attractive to the eye.
So what exactly is this high-impact formula, and how does it work in practice? Castein illustrates the power of this approach with famous paintings by Michelangelo, Grant Wood, DaVinci, and Vermeer. He refers to it as “centralized composition” and he demonstrates its powerful applications for photography.
One of the benefits of this technique, according to Castein, is that “centralized compositions allow the subject to be dominant.” In basic terms, this is what he recommends you do: Put the key subject within the space that would be left in the middle by having a matte border around the surrounding areas in a scene.
In other words, the idea is to divide the shot into two relevant sections; the central part itself (which can be as large or small as you want), and the outside border that contains all of the supporting information like dead space and other less important stuff.
Depending upon the situations at hand, this approach is easier said than done, unless you avail yourself of the tips that Castein provides. As you’ll see, he describes the method with wide-angle lenses in mind, but you can use this compositional technique with midrange and telephoto lenses too.
The last half of this eight-minute lesson demonstrates everything you need to know. The first step is filling the frame with your subject as much as possible and proceeding from there. Castein’s popular YouTube channel has over 23K subscribers, and we suggest you join the club.
And don’t miss the video we featured recently with a game-changing technique from another outstanding landscape photographer who demonstrates how to use back-button focus to capture sharper images in the field.
