Yesterday I spent part of Canada Day on assignment for
Mayoral Candidate Daryl Bonar. The assignment was to shoot Mr. Bonar at the Canada Day celebration in Borden Park where he was a volunteer, helping to hand out hotdogs and pop to all of the Canada Day celebrators. He was also there with his great group of volunteers to promote and support a petition to
Stop the Closure of the City Centre Airport.
The day was just beautiful, sunny with only a few clouds floating on the breeze, great weather for all of the celebrators, not so great for said photographer. For those of you that don't know, trying to photograph on a bright sunny day IS NOT ideal conditions. The sun produces to much contrast, were the highlights are to bright and the shadows are to dark, to produce a nice photo.
So what do you do when you HAVE to shot on a bright sunny day? Well there are a few things you can do to get a better photo;
1) Pray for Clouds..... clouds act like a gigantic softbox to the sun, softening the light and reducing the contrast of the scene, so when you do have cloud coverage, put you subject into the shadow of the cloud for nice soft light.
2) And what do you do if they're isn't any clouds in the sky, look for SHADE. Shade has the same light qualities that a softbox or cloud coverage gives, nice soft light with alot lower contrast than the bright sun. The easiest place to find shade is to go to the north side of a building, in the northern hemisphere, the north side of a building is in the shade most of the day. What if there isn't any buildings around to shade your subject, well then you look for anything that is producing shade, whether its some trees or a rock outcrop, just make sure your subject is completely in the shade or your subject will have mixed lighting on them which will increase the contrast of the photo and will mess up the colour balance of the photo, sun light and shade have 2 very different colour temperatures.
3) Ok, so the first 2 suggestions are great if you have cloud coverage or your in a spot that has some shade, but what if your in the middle of a field, a parking lot or on a beach with no clouds and no shade. Well you make your own shade by using a scrim, a scrim is anything that blocks light. In this application you will want to put your scrim between the sun and your subject to cast a shadow over your subject so again you get a softer light onto your subject and produce a much nicer photo.
4) So the first three tips work great if your subject is stationary or is confined to a small area. But what do you do if your subject is constantly on the move as in my situation yesterday. Well there is only one thing you can do and that is expose for the highlights. What I mean by this is that when you meter for the light you want to make sure that you don't blow out the highlights. Your shadows will be darker but you can fix that in post production, if you blow out your highlights there is no way to recover that lost information. You can tell if your blowing the highlights if you see any spots on you LCD screen that are blinking, if you see blinking then lower your exposure by either raising your shutter speed, stopping down your aperture or lowering your ISO.
I hope these techniques help you the next time you have to shoot out in the bright sun, if you have any questions please leave a comment and I'll try to answer them for you.
Ok so enough talking, on with the photos from yesterdays assignment.
