You're a very talented individual and your work is inspiring. Keep it up! (My tip is don't shoot at an angle into backlit water, get down low, or it will drown out the subject. Took me a long time to realize this )
Using a mirrorless camera, I can see through the viewfinder in real time what the photo will look like before hitting the shutter button. Many times I will change positions and or the focus point to get the proper exposure. 😊
This is a great channel. Lots of really useful info delivered succinctly. But, I have to admit, 10% of the reason I come here is to hear Simon say, “My name is Simon d’Entremont”.
You're literally giving out a professional photographer apprenticeship for free. Thank you. I love how dense and complex your videos are so no matter what kind of photographer you are you learn something useful.
Good ideas Simon. I like doing a few of these things: 1. Where the subject is against a bright background, zoom in and fill the frame with the subject and spot meter. Worry less about the blown-out background areas. 2. Use flash to balance - this minimizes dynamic range extremes. But as you said, use just enough and never so much that the flash induces specular highlights. 3. Use ND Grad filters. This helps reduce extremes. I use a reverse ND Grad for sunrise/sunset photography when the sun is at the horizon. 4. Switch to monochrome. Extremely contrast scenes look great in B&W.
@@Ty-no8lj you can do it either way as long as you save the image in a RAW format. I have heard some photographers advocate using monochrome to help visualize the look they are trying to achieve. When you get to post you can refine the image to your creative interests.
My favorite way of dealing with bright sunlight is shooting the shady side of the subject (which Simon mentioned) and filling with a LED if necessary. I shoot video the same way using LED panels for a fill. A panel that can dial between 2700K to 6000K is incredibly helpful. Getting a halo effect by shooting the shady side is always a classic look. I wish I could add to what Simon said but he covered all of my favorite techniques and more.
Simon !! Such economy of words to convey so much detail. When I combine what you presented with the points made by those who leave additional information, your 9 minute video becomes a one to two hour study/practice session. Thanks for all your support and information.
Your backlit photos look stunning. One inexpensive tool that I bring to every sunny photoshoot is a diffusor/reflector combo. I have an assistant hold the diffusor over my model, or bounce light up into the shadows with the reflector. Turns out great!
Literally you don’t know how much you’ve helped everyone. Like literally you don’t know..and that’s what’s great about you. On behalf of everyone. Thank you!m so much!!! ❤🙏🏻
Thank you. Your tips are brilliant. And your great talent is that you don’t just repeat “truths “ learnt from others but understand the rationale behind them and are able to pass that on.
I love shooting silhouettes of birds a lot! I often convert the shots to black and white for a different effect. Thank you Simon for a wonderful channel and great contributions to the photography community!
Simon, your videos are bringing new life into my photography. I only recently found your channel (good timing after getting a camera again) and the quick and beautiful lessons in every video for every skill level is incredible. Your seemingly obvious to the pros tip about shooting in the shade with a sunlit background was such a Eureka moment for me and that's just from this video!
Wow!!! Thank you Simon, this video opens a new door for me, since I shoot ONLY in the 'golden hour," a very very narrow window of time, not that doesn't even last one hour LOL My photography has grown since I started following you, and gratitude is owed to you. My warmest regards for you and your loved ones! 🙏
Thank you for all the videos like this. As a volunteer photographer called into action each Summer to catch the action on Lake Banook, your tips have greatly improved the quality over the last couple of years. Midday sun, water glare, fast action, rapid weather changes, moving shooting platforms, and limited time to position all provide for some challenging days to get everything just right. Blowing out the highlights of the water has been a creative decision now and again in favour of getting the detail/sharpness of the paddlers. Keep up the great work, and if you are ever in the area or looking for a field trip idea for one of your classes, let us know!
You are my favorite photography teacher on RU-vid. I'm also Canadian but moved to Thailand a decade ago. I'm just back from climbing Kilimanjaro and a 5-day safari where I took incredible wildlife pictures! The sun was very harsh and challenging at times especially at the Ngorongoro Crater where there is no shade at all. It's best to take photos early in the morning or late in the day but not always possible when traveling on a tight schedule.
A very good set of tips. My first photography related job back in the early 70s was assisting wedding photographer Monte Zucker where I learned his technique of using a flash over the camera for fill with a second overlapping off camera flash to record a full range of detail by matching lighting ratio to range of print or digital sensor. I’ve used the same dual flash technique ever since, always carrying a pair of Canon flashes in my bag. Outdoors for human portraits my I use white and black towels on a stand were the subject will stand to set exposure, using the direct sun as a back rim / hair light but keeping the white highlights illuminated by the sun below clipping. Before flash is added the front of the white towel (or a white wedding dress) will be middle gray and shadow detail lost in the black one. The next step is to adjust fill flash power until the shadows lit by north sky + fill flash have the desired detail in the darkest parts of the black towel, then add the off axis key light to bring the highlights in hits on the front of the white towel up to where they need to be, which is 240 - 245, slightly darker than the 250 sunlit white fabric, which is slightly darker than the 255 rim lit areas creating three levels of tonal separation and texture in the highlights. This becomes very predictable and repeatable if flashes on are used at the same power and distances. A old pro trick is to tie a string with a knot at the correct distance to the base of each flash a be able to repeat the same exposure. Something to be aware shooting faces outdoors the high angle of the skylight will cause the brows to shade the eyes. That is remedied by having the subjects look up above the horizon 20 or so degrees to get the skylight into the eyes then shoot from a short ladder to keep face parallel with sensor and create a slight, flattering foreshortening of the body. The sky light from the north will also have direction and create shadow so to avoid a muddled lighting pattern on the face I’ll first pose it to the light as I would if using a north facing window, then place the off camera “key” flash so it hits the face at the same angle creating the same modeling. The results look similar to a key:fill:rimlight studio lit shot. Fur and feathers have millions of flat facets which are what creates the illusion of texture when they reflect specular highlights. While direct sun in the face makes humans squint to doesn’t affect animals and flat sunlight hitting fur and feathers and creating those highlights will add texture and detail. Adding flash to back lit shots has the same effect. Even if the flash is too far from the subject to affect exposure it will still add those texture revealing specular highlight clues.
Great information, as an engineer for the railroad I have a hard time getting out during ideal conditions and often have to shoot in harsh lighting due to my work schedule. Thanks for all that you do.
I would suggest shooting film in harsh light, it thrives in these conditions since overly bright highlights don’t pose the same problem to a negative that they do to a digital sensor. Great video Simon!
My wife loves me taking portraits in outdoor areas, but I can never get her out there any earlier than about 11:30 or so, so high noon to 2:00 pm is a usual time. So besides the great advice on shade, that circular polarizer has saved more portraits than I care to admit. In bright conditions it will help out enormously. So for shooters that don’t have one, it’s worth the investment. It’s like sunglasses for tour camera…….🙂📸
Thanks. I will try these ideas, especially when I travel. When traveling, you don't always get the time to wait for the ideal conditions. When I find myself in these situations, I try to under expose and then hopefully do something magical in Lightroom. Your tips are always awesome, and I always wait till the very end. Have a great week.
A circular polarizer is not “circular” because you can rotate it. All the linear polarizers I have used on cameras can be rotated. The “circular”in a circular polarizer comes from how it is constructed with a 1/4 wave plate that a linear polarizer does not have. Both do the same thing. Circular polarizers can work better with digital cameras than linear, but whether that is true for a particular camera, depends.
True. Linear polarizers are a problem with DSLRs that have a beam splitting mirror, not mirrorless. I only have circular polarizers, so can't test to see if there is any difference between linear and circular with mirrorless cameras. I would not expect any.@@kamcma1
I like your idea of an almost overexposed, and underexposed shot combinations. I like to backlight my subjects also, it can make for interesting compositions. Thank you for your tips Simon!
Thanks so much for the free ebook!! My wife bought me a camera last Christmas and I've absolutely fallen in love with photography. I love your channel and have learned a lot from your videos. Thanks so much!
My tip is to play around with angles and try various perspectives to shoot from, like above from a rooftop, or below from the bottom of a staircase, taking advantage of shadows and the angle of sunlight instead of seeing them as a detriment. Obviously depends on what genre and subject you're shooting, but I always find looking for creative perspectives to be the most simple way of taking more interesting and unique photos, and also having fun.
My favorite trick is the most obvious- fill flash. I learned it years ago while a guest at a wedding and watching the pro take the official photos. She was kind enough to share her knowledge with me. Another tip is to shoot only a small section of the subject leaving a rim of the bright light. Have to watch for lens flare on that one.
This is the first time I've seen any of your vids. Out of all the RU-vid tutorials I have seen, yours is the most simplistic and informative. I'm going to subscribe to your channel. Thanks!!
Always detailed and very helpful. One way I deal with things is to practice. We all have a spare hour here and there so I take my camera and practice something. By doing this I am not trying to get it right when I need to....but rather learning how to on mundane subject. For bright skies I took a lot of photos of the chimney on my roof. It is dark against a very bright sky so gave me a good subject to try and balance things. But having your tips and experise that you so willingly share really does help. Thanks as always.
These tips are amazing as always, thank you Simon! I like to shoot gritty urban environments, train tracks, graffiti, etc, then apply a contrasty B&W process to it in lightroom. Also works well for freeway underpasses, the shapes and the shadows are fun to play with as you mentioned.
I do a lot of photography of the forest floor, and I take a gray, somewhat translucent umbrella in my backpack. It’s not easy to hold it in position though, so I’ve decided to try pinning a light weight piece of nylon tarp to the nape of my shirt and then attaching it at my elbows with some elastic so that when I lift my arms to take a photo, it opens up like bat wings and casts a shadow wherever I’m aiming the camera. I move around too much to set up a tripod for each shot, so I bracket everything! That also means I can’t do the automatic blending, but I don’t really care for how that turns out anyway. I lighten and darken my own layers and combine them by manually erasing where I want more detail - no averaging involved. I can cheat a little where something small is blown out, but when there’s just no information to work with, you have some philosophical decisions to make. Dappled light is lovely to walk through but in a photograph it’s the bane of my existence. Thank you for addressing this topic!
I like backlight when the sunlight filters through the wing and tail feathers of birds in flight. Same with macro shooting where leaves can display inner detail as if being x-rayed.
Thanks, Simon, for sharing your expertise! Limiting your sessions/shooting to only golden hour is ...well limiting! Learning how to work with the light you are "given" is freeing and just smart. Love it!
Thank you for these excellent reminders! I especially appreciate the idea of using harsh light to your advantage. Backlighting can be challenging, but can also be an opportunity for dramatic shots.
I love my long exposures, but making them in the middle of the day is a challenge. You get some great detail and different textures that simply are not available when shooting in low light situations. For this reason, my neutral density filters are probably my most used filters in my camera bag.
Another great video Simon! I live in the tropics of north Queensland Australia. My best way to deal with midday sun is to get up early shoot for a couple hours, go and get a coffee, maybe go to the gym, download my pictures in the morning, do little bit of editing, have lunch, have a nap, and then go out for a late afternoon photo shoot. I appreciate your points, but man the sun is tough here and the heat haze makes bird photography atrocious in the middle of the day unless it's cloudy.
This is exactly what I needed. I have a client who wants me to shoot a group photo down near the beach in midday. Thanks for the video Simon! Have a great weekend.
Interesting tips Simon. A lot of them I follow or have been following (case in point: as recently as last Saturday) but on auto pilot. I used to think I was the one that was facing all these problems and was wondering how pros like you overcome them. Now that you have given me this tip I can be more mindful of these tips and apply them meaningfully or whenever its extremely bright outside. Thanks a ton for these tips!
This is really my challenge, I shoot motorsports and most tracks there is zero shade and I'm at the mercy of the sun here in AZ. But I have to capture the event, from the start to finish, so mid day is the worst, but I use the combo ND and CPL filter to help with the sun. I also shoot from far away and try to use lower shutter speeds to get that sweet motion blur and the vehicles clear, so this is rather tricky to pull off.
Thank you, Simon. Great topic. I often have time to shoot landscape during lunch, but the harsh light poses a real challenge. Now I have some new strategies to experiment with…many thanks.
Thanks for this one! For many hobbyists and beginners like myself, "shoot during Golden Hour" is nice advice but not always useful. My own approach to harsh light thus far is your first one: seeking shade, whether it be via buildings or trees (forest light in mid-afternoon has its own magic, I've found). I also love reflections off water or glass, so I like to make use of those effects when I can. Finally, looking for places of high contrast make for a nice opportunity to do some more abstract photography.
All great tips! Thanks Simon! I had completely forgotten about circular polarizers. Just went out and played with mine and was able to bring out clouds in a dramatic sky that I actually couldn't see with my eyes. So cool!
In harsh bright light, I often set my composition with a 'film noir' feeling in it. The subject matter is not always important, I pursue the 'style' of the photograph as my aim often in harsh light. Thank you for your tips.
What many don't realize is that if you put the sun behind you even when it's low, you can accidentally put your subject in an "aura" or "glory" zone where the light bounced directly back into your lens, causing color wash out, low contrast, or your subject to even look like you used an on camera flash. If you've flown in a plane and looked at it's shadow on clouds below you've seen the glowing "glory" or aura in the clouds. That exact same visual phenomenon is happening on the ground all the time too. So be aware and move your subject a bit left or right to get that out of that "hot spot." I've shot runners at the finish line in the early morning and some images just looked awful, like I shot them in the dark with a small flash. Yet a few seconds later and a different angle they look great, with vivid colors, sharpness and contrast. They moved out of that fist sized aura zone.
Great video :) I guess my biggest thing, is shooting at 2/3rds to 1 full stop under, most of the time. I can always pull up the shadows, but once the highlights are blown, the shot is wasted. Its funny, I shot bracketed exposure sets for basically ALL of my landscape shots for 13 years ! I have known that I could shoot bracketed sets for birds and wildlife, in certain situations, but almost never think to do it. I need to train myself to try this more often. I mean, if I've already taken several single frame shots, and my creature is still there, why not ? Thank you for the reminder :)
One thing I've heard previously that worked well for me is shooting in a black and white color profile. I usually shoot jpeg because I don't enjoy the process of photo editing. I try to get it right in camera as much as possible. Since harsh light is difficult to expose for and you are basically shooting for composition and not for color this made a whole lot of sense to me, especially since I don't do post processing.
Great video! When I shoot in harsh midday light I like to consider black and white edits, sometimes the extreme contrasts work better that washed out colors. Also if a subject is agains the sky like birds flying during the middle of the day black and white can make the photos more interesting as well.
This is a great video. Very helpful. I understand the polarizing filter better. I try to get out are the golden hours of the day but there is lots of time in between and now that I'm retired I get out walking a lot. I'm enjoying ever though I'm a 50 year veteran of photography 📸 📷 learning more.
I was never one to use filters except for a uv. I tried out the polarizing filter this afternoon. That was the best explanation of it's use I ever had and it made sense so I tried it. Thank you.
Good Tips! We were just on vacation in Sicily and there were day when I shot one stop under and adjusted in post. It's a no easy and a circular polarizer is not always the answer
🦢 A white bird’s feathers, when spread, filter out the harshest light but let enough thru to get a good photo. You won’t get the detail in the center, but you get a nice outline in sunlit feathers.
My best pictures have been late evening, but next to that, is to go out on bright sunny days with light cloud cover to diffuse the light. This can provide very nice images.
Great video as always, thank you! I know you talk more specifically about landscape and wildlife photography, but for portraits using reflectors is a really cheap and easy way to "bounce" light into the subject's face, all while using just natural light.
I like your channel you actually know what you're talking about. I think a curve ball would be to cover some of the science usage of camera sensors like the DS-Qi2, DS-Fi3, Digital Sight 50M. I get it, different field. But it's still cool to see a 60mp sensor seeing fluorescent at a microscopic level with 16-bit color at 24fps These companies, Fuji, Nikon, Canon, Sony, etc. are a key reason we're getting closer to cures and advancing health, science, and discovery. Photography in general, were at such a macro level, and pretty much ignore the micro level.
At the moment autumn is in full swing at my location, so not too much problems with sunlight. But thanks again for the useful tips. I think that most cameras have a flash setting for fill-in flash (especially those that have build in flash).
Very well composed videos Simon, you are (for me )the best photography instrutor on youtube. Now, in a month I will be purchasing my first camera... The Sony A7 R ii with a sony 55-210mm intermediate lense. I have always had a great eye for the shot and an artistic gene in me. I cant wait to have that baby on my lap in early January! I learned alot from you, just looking forward to sharing my photos and experiences with you. Thankyou very much, cheers from Portugal. *My country is very beautiful, i hope that I can honor it through my work😊
I'd also add using an RGB histogram as well, and not just a white histogram. Certain colors blow out before others. I'd also add the use of mirrors as a light modifier to sunlight, constant light, flash, and pop up flashes.
📸 All your tips are great if you manage to find the best in each situation. Sometimes in harsh midday light I switch to b/w - b/w can benefit from hard contrasts. Thanks for your work! 🙋♂️🙂🙋♂️
