Sun is your new best friend! Photography is always about drawing with light. The stronger the light, the more we can get creative in our drawing. Shooting at daylight could be considered as “easier” than at low light time. Especially because we do not need to push ISO ability of our cameras (so even cheap camera can do these shots well), also we always can get high shutter speed and use smaller aperture to make sure create take sharp focus. Additionally, actually there are some special visual effect that we can create where there is plenty of sunlight around.
1. Sun as an Additional Object
Sun can be add to a photo as a dramatic object, that shows the scale difference between sun and objects around it. We can make it looks enormous, divine feels, as the true source of light on this earth. Scale bring a big impact to create a strong image, it shows the relation between two or more things and add the depth effect as well.
2. Dark Shadow
Particularly happen in near golden hour time, both morning and before evening time. When sun is on <45º altitude, it will result a long shadow effect that can create an unique story line. Most of the time we can see shadow on the wall or on the ground. There are times when we need to flip our images to let shadows have stronger visual effect. Capture great shadow image is always about pay more attention to gesture of people, what accessories they wear and geometry around subject. The more movement feeling, or unique “shape” of the gestures, the more we can get strong shadow storyline. Accessories such as umbrella or hat can add more shape into shadow, which is lead to have more complexity in visual.
Most of the time, geometry in shadows formed by building shape around subject. In the right place and right moment, shadow can create a “short time” framing that we can use to isolate subject and add more visual effect in photo. Just remember that this kind of frame is never stay for long as the sun keeps move and frame can disappear in any minutes. As the photo above, I had my exposure in lower level so the brightest part of the scene has “normal” intensity of highlight, and voila, any other parts of scene that do not receive (or low intensity of) light will turn to pitch black and help you frame the subject.
3. Silhouette
Just like shadow, to create a strong visual in silhouette we need to pay attention to gesture and geometry. Any sign of movements, even from small thing like fingers will add more dynamic level into silhouette. Geometry at around the object could lead to add depth, complexity and help tell more stories/feels from an image. Just remember, when you have no idea what to shot, and the sun is shining strongly, get shot from low angle, then point out your camera to sun or sky, everything will turn into silhouette! Make sure the silhouette has dynamic composition of course.
And, if it happens that you only can shot indoor while sun is shining brightly out there, window can become your source of silhouette. Window also can become a good frame to isolate subject, to draw the viewer more focus to subject. Another tips, to create strong silhouette photo is always watch(!) the background scene, make it as simple/clean as possible. Otherwise, background can become a strong distraction and taken away viewer’s focus from POI (point of interest) or main subject.
4. Sunstar
The beautiful sunstar! Not only for landscapers, in street photography sunstar is such a beautiful object that help ordinary photos can have surreal feeling and infuse stronger”mood” to viewer. To capture sunstar we need to point out our camera at the right direction into the sun, it is a little bit tricky, so need to experiment with few angles first to know where spot that will create sunstar. Use smaller aperture (f11 or smaller) definitely will help to create a longer sunstar.
That is all for now, hope a good daylight ahead to all of us!
Keep shooting and stay inspired,
Nico Harold