Shooting into the light
- This topic has 65 replies, 18 voices, and was last updated Apr 11, 2014 at 3:19 pm by
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I’ve found myself doing this more often lately. Its been a preferred angle of mine for some time, you get great highlights but its a high risk angle. One of the “rules” of photography is that you can’t shoot into light that you can’t look into. Sometimes you can’t do anything else, especially in the “heat of battle” when you’re dealing with boat positioning. Digital’s range also reduces highlights, especially in clouds but new Lightroom techniques I’ve learned can overcome that short fall.
Here are my tips. Your lenses must be high quality and immaculately clean, use whatever you can of the subject where possible to get the front element of the lens into shadow. Boost your flash by one stop.
Be prepared for a lot of failures.
Be really glad to hear any other suggestions.
One other point, magazine editors are very scared of “into the light” shots, its also possible they don’t see too many of them, not good ones anyway.
Here’s a few samples
Another thing it does is put a very even light on the subject provided you can fill it with flash.
Morsie
Did you use the automatic metering system and that set to +1 stop? I try’d shooting into the light a few times but that did not really work out. I used my ITTL and most pictures were overflashed.
Yep auto composite metering (not on spot), then just tweak the flash compensation and ride the dials.
“Don’t fear the flare” – I like it!!!
Morsie
I generally underexpose the sky by 1/3 to 2/3rds.
Then adjust flash output as desired. Sometimes I want it a little soft as the first couple below, then others stornger to remove shadows.
When shooting fish I try to remember to angle the flash head so you dont blow the scales/highlights in the fish
without flash
I love this post Morsie. Great topic. I agree with Will that your pictures have a certain clean simple quality that is soooo hard to produce under the big orb. Very respectable work. Same goes for you John. Also, David and Richard have posted great works worth mentioning.
These direct sun/light shots are very challenging for me, but it has been a personal goal to master the technical nuisances involved in the “hot shots”. The greatest hurdle has been maintaining tonality throughout the shot when there might be 8-10 stops difference between highlights and shadows. For me it came down to studying the art of high-sync flash at fast shutter speeds with multiple strobes. The high-sync flash function on Nikon TTL or manual is impressive but learning to unleash it’s power is a different story. Situations that negate flash (i.e. open ocean or landscape) are a whole different set of challenges.
I agree with Morsie that the wasted shots outnumber the keepers, and you need to shoot many different exposure patterns in one set. I can’t imagine doing this kind of shooting on the water like you guys – that is a lot of math and thinking while the other guy has “fish on” and all the other variables involved with landing a fish and avoiding water damage on the camera. My pulse would be like 150 bpm!
Here are a few recent examples of shooting Full Monty.
Cayman
This is from Chicago last week. I was doing some street photography and just had to get this shoot of the Hancock building as the sun was directly overhead. The challenge was capturing the nice fill light from camera right at the base of the building while maintaining tonality from top to bottom without blowing the highlights at top or underexposing the shadows at the bottom. I must have looked like a weirdo trying to adjust the knobs in a flurry.
King Louis – a 4 lb miniature poodle. Hand held shot (and hand held dog, hahaha) with high-sync flash. The sun is behind the dog which produces a great hair light effect as long as you can compensate with correct flash en fos.
Neal I’ve come to consider my camera gear as just a tool used to do a job. I have camera armour on the bodies and have also bought some waterproof covers for the lenses because I want to be able to get shots in crap weather as well.
I also really like the backlighting effect you get when you shoot into the light, particularly through fins. Pity we couldn’t get the fish straight on this one.
Here’s another
Especially good for those fish that have big fins.
Morsie
Neal it’s like anythin else, once you start doing it, theres comes a point where it’s more automatic and less thought process. Like Morsie I enjoy getting shots that are into the light. You do blow alot, especially when running and gunning and theres no chance for retakes, but with practise you start dialing adjustments almost without thinking.
face he light and decrease ISO 2/3s or stop down 2/3s as a result?
2 clicks of your shutter speed dial offsets that and keeps you “good”. You do it without looking at your meter reading.With regards to open spaces and vast expanses where flash wont cut it.
Grad NDs and Rev NDs
Thanks Will,
As nice as it is to photograph in low light early morning and late evening situations, so often (in saltwater anyway) the best fishing is through the middle of the day when the light is at its “worst”. If we’re going to be fishing photographers we just have to learn to deal with it and make the very best of it. The light in these images was the ugliest I think I’ve ever encountered – it was about 120 degrees and there were big dust storms. The fish were caught in mid afternoon so I had to look to do something interesting with them. Would like the opportunity again and would probably use a reflector as there were enough hands on board for someone to hold one. My hot shoe was playing up badly, turns out it had been damaged, and flash quality was sporadic. I now carry a second flash. The glare in these pics just about hurts my eyes looking at them and that was the feel of the day I wanted to capture.
The fish is a Murray Cod
This is a good one too, I particularly like the dark background. Often the best detail is found when the subject is in shadow rather than full sun.
Morsie
Great shots Morsie..
The low angle cod stuff is wicked..
www.dsaphoto.com
A picture is thousand words that takes less than a second while a thousand words is a picture that takes a month.
Great looking photos everyone. I love the look of shooting into sun. I like to use no fill and expose for the shadow side of back lit faces/objects. It blows out the sky, but thats the look I love so much.
Here’s one of mine from a recent trip to Ecuador. On the beach at sunset, exposed for the shadows, slowish shutter to get a little bit of motion blur.
One of my favorite photographers (Nick Onken) does that look a lot and has really gotten me interested in shooting that way.
http://society6.com/grainfarmer Fly Fishing and Landscape open edition Photography prints.
http://grainfarmer.vsco.co/ iPhone photos
http://instagram.com/chad_simcox InstagramInteresting way of doing it Chad, thanks, I’ll try it at the next opportunity – I imagine you need some pretty low early or late light anyway.
Morsie
Yep unobstructed magic hour light. You’re not going to want a lot of trees or buildings cluttering up the background. Works great on open water, beaches, meadow streams…
http://society6.com/grainfarmer Fly Fishing and Landscape open edition Photography prints.
http://grainfarmer.vsco.co/ iPhone photos
http://instagram.com/chad_simcox Instagram
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