Shooting in mid-day sun

[aam1234]

What would you do if you want to shoot but it's bright and sunny outside. One can wait till the light softens, but let's say that's not a good option. For portraits one can use a flash for fill or go under the shade, but what about other subjects such as landscape or architecture.

What do you think. Any ideas.

[peterst6906]

In terms of architecture, I normally like shooting around dusk, but my second preference is for the middle of the day.

If you are worried about hard shadows or large dynamic ranges, then HDR is always an option, but I've never really found it necessary for architecture.

All of these shots were capture in fairly bright light:











The main problem with the middle of the day that I have found is the shadows are sometimes really blue and it can be hard to color correct unless you treat different parts of an image independently.

This one shows that a little bit on the shadow side of the church, but not so bad that I felt it needed correcting:



While blue shadows can be a problem, they are fairly easily dealt with in post if you can't shoot at a different time of the day.

Regards,

Peter

[aam1234]

Wow, Peter These are stunning!

Did you use HDR in any of them (I hope not ).

[peterst6906]

Originally Posted by aam1234

Wow, Peter These are stunning!

Did you use HDR in any of them (I hope not ).

No aam, they're all single exposures.

Regards,

Peter

[Benji]

In landscape and architecture you usually want harder lighting as it brings out texture. In portraiture "texture" means the skin has wrinkles, lines, bags under eyes, zits, scars and folds.

Benji

[moxi1]

Hi all,

excellent architecture peter! Where was it taken?

Many times you just don't have a choice when to take a picture.
You always can take different approaches, you can use a pol filter to saturate the sky, or neutral density filters to enable you to have longer shutter speeds, or graduated neutral density filters to improve contrast.
However this is mainly for landscapes, I personally have not much experience in portraits.

Cheers Moxi1

[peterst6906]

Hi Moxi.

#1: The Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands
#2: 2 buildings shot to look like one, in Rotterdam, Netherlands
#3: Local water authority buolding in Rijswijk, Netherlands
#4 and #5: Zamok Bojnice, Slovakia
#6: St Sava Catholic Church in Belgrade, Serbia

All shot with D200 and 18-70.

I have a lot of these sort of shots from all over the World.

Regards,

Peter

[moxi1]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the info.
You must have a great portfolio, do you have any particular professional reason to photograph architecture all over the globe - or is it just an interest?

Cheers Moxi1

[peterst6906]

Originally Posted by moxi1

Hi Peter,
...do you have any particular professional reason to photograph architecture all over the globe - or is it just an interest?
Cheers Moxi1

Architecture is just an interest. As an expat Aussie, travel is work related and I'm just lucky that I work Worldwide.

My professional photography is mostly forensic, which is documentary in style rather than creative.

These days my photography has more creative aspects to it, but I still find the documentary style of architecture photography appealing to my background.

Regards,

Peter