Portrait in Harsh Sun? Create Your Own Shade

Tuesday 6 August 2024, 22:11 by Elja Trum | 2,637 views | 0 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

If you go outside to take photos in the middle of the day, you have to deal with bright sunlight casting harsh shadows on your subject. That usually doesn't produce great photos. If possible, shoot in the shade, or create your own shade if necessary.

Isabella and Julia - f/4.5, 1/1250s, 640 ISO @ 100mm
I took the photo above yesterday afternoon. We had a clear blue sky and the sunlight was very bright in the early afternoon. The bench we wanted to use was partly in the shade of an apple tree, but that resulted in bright patches of light.

Too much difference between the light and dark areas in your photo doesn't look good, because it's almost impossible to correct. You'll keep seeing it.

As a solution, I created a canopy for this photo using two tripods and a foldable backdrop cloth.

A translucent screen would actually be even better, but unfortunately I don't have one in such a large size. The advantage of a translucent screen is that quite a lot of light still passes through. The contrast between the shadow areas and the light areas in the background is then not as great.

Interestingly enough, you can see here that the iPhone I used to take the behind-the-scenes photo automatically creates a useful HDR photo, which already nicely compensates for the contrast between the dark and light areas.

Using your camera's HDR option is therefore a good alternative to creating your own shade. Or an addition to it.

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