5 THINGS TO TRY WHEN SHOOTING INTO THE SUN

With a little imagination and planning, shooting into the Sun can be so much fun.  As someone who rises early every day, fresh mornings are personally my favorite windows of time to photograph. I experiment a lot with the Sun. And in this post, I am going to keep it simple and give you some handy hacks to shoot into the sun. Check it out!

SILHOUETTE SHOTS:

The first and the easiest thing to do is to create silhouettes. You don’t have to be a pro to do this. All you have to do is place the subject between the camera and the sky with the Sun, and expose for the sky. Don’t fret. Just remember that the sky should not be blown out when you view through the camera. One can create amazing pictures with a lot of drama using this technique.

LIGHT THE SUBJECT WITH A POWERFUL LIGHT SOURCE:

Now imagine that you have a perfect silhouette in the frame, the background and everything are in place.  Then you feel that the subject if lit will be a great rendition too. Then by common sense, you have to light the subject. Depending on the intensity of the sun/sky, you need a powerful external light source. I do not carry any studio lights/strobes for its hard to handle and carry around. I carry have a speed lite and use an SMDV softbox. Many times light through the soft box will not be enough so you have to point the light directly onto the subject.

USE SHALLOW DEPTH OF FIELD:

Using a lens with shallow depth of field gifts you surprising effects. Using a higher Aperture, say 1.4 or 1.8, will gift you bokehs, blurred backgrounds, and colorful patterns. Place the subject in the perfect ambiance and play around with this technique.

PLAY WITH THE FLARES:

Flares are fun! And there is full scope for it when you have the basics right. Aperture again is the trick here. The small the aperture, better the starburst you can achieve in your shots. Keep your subject in place and try moving around your camera with apt aperture settings. When changing perspectives, you will hit the right spot for flares to appear.

EQUIP ND FILTERS:

It’s a great accessory to carry when you are shooting into the sun. You can reduce the exposure by multiple stops and get the effect that you are looking for.Here is a picture that I shot with the ND filter on to get the dreamy effect in the water which is otherwise not possible especially when you are shooting into the sun.