A Photography Guideline That Everyone Should Know

by Joseph T. Sinclair

Most peo­ple know this essen­tial rule of good pho­tog­ra­phy already, but it is worth restat­ing, nonethe­less, as a reminder: don’t shoot pho­tos direct­ly into the sun if you can avoid it.

Many pho­tog­ra­phers like shoot­ing best in the ear­ly morn­ing or late evening in the warm glow of the sun ris­ing or set­ting. But I’m not one of those. I pre­fer to shoot in direct sun­light dur­ing the day. But if you’re a day­light shoot­er like me, you have to be care­ful. If you shoot direct­ly into the sun you’re like­ly to get washed out pho­tos, pho­tos with a whitish haze, or pho­tos lens flares. None of these is par­tic­u­lar­ly enhanc­ing to your photographs.

Shoot­ing into the sun is par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­ble­some when you shoot an object in the fore­ground. The back­ground will be well light­ed, where­as the object the fore­ground will be dark in its own shad­ow. If you’re close enough to the object, you can use a flash to light up the object in the shad­ows. This is called a fill-in flash. The object the fore­ground might be veg­e­ta­tion, a vehi­cle, peo­ple, or almost any­thing. Unless you want a dark spot in your pho­to, you’ll have to use a flash.

Fire Truck and Sun  In the photo of the firetruck at the head of this article, the sun is slightly in front and to the side of the photographer. Consequently, the firetruck is in a partial shadow showing a dull red. Better to take this photo with the sun behind the photographer to bring out the beautiful bright red of the firetruck.

What’s the alter­na­tive? Well, the alter­na­tive is to shoot the object with the sun behind you if at all pos­si­ble. This means chang­ing posi­tions (i.e., shoot­ing the object from anoth­er side). Or it may mean mov­ing the object so that you can shoot it with the sun stream­ing over your shoulder.

For instance, you see peo­ple shoot­ing a group of their friends or rel­a­tives into the sun all the time. When they look at such pho­tos, they may find that all the faces are so dark that you can bare­ly rec­og­nize any­one. Bet­ter to rethink what you’re doing before you take a pho­to like that.

The into-the-sun shot isn’t the only prob­lem. Shoot­ing per­pen­dic­u­lar to the suns rays also has its own set of prob­lems. If you use a 3‑pound pro­fes­sion­al cam­era, you prob­a­bly know that when you shoot per­pen­dic­u­lar to the suns rays—that is, when the sun is on one side of you or the other—that you need to use a polar­iz­ing fil­ter. A polar­iz­ing fil­ter reduces haze and also cuts down on glare off broad sur­faces such as water and makes the sky bluer.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, using a polar­iz­ing fold­er with a phone cam­era is incon­ve­nient and not a like­ly solu­tion that most peo­ple will use to improve their phone cam­era pho­tog­ra­phy. Again, what’s the solu­tion? The solu­tion is to get the sun behind you when you’re shoot­ing. That means the sun should be stream­ing over your shoul­der towards the scene or object that you are shooting.

What does this tell you? It tells you that for cer­tain and immo­bile objects or scenes (e.g., a build­ing) that you must shoot them at the right time of day when the sun is stream­ing towards them over your shoul­der. In oth­er words, some things you have to shoot in the morn­ing and oth­ers you will have to shoot lat­er in the afternoon.

At noon the sun is direct­ly over­head. Shoot­ing in any direc­tion will require a polar­iz­ing fil­ter. So high noon is not the ide­al time of day to shoot pho­tos with your phone camera.

If you have to shoot into the sun, you can min­i­mize the detri­men­tal effects of the sun’s radi­a­tion by keep­ing as much of the sky out of your pho­to as pos­si­ble. The same goes for large reflec­tive sur­faces such as water (e.g., lakes); keep such sur­faces out of your pho­tos much as you can.

So far we’ve been talk­ing about a sun­ny day when the sun is out and shin­ing. Per­haps the best time to take pho­tographs is on a bright over­cast day when the sky is not too dark and the clouds are act­ing as a giant dif­fuser for the sun. Dif­fused light is the best for pho­tos, gen­er­al­ly speak­ing. It does away with harsh shad­ows. It ful­ly sat­u­rates col­ors. You don’t have to wor­ry about the suns light; the light is every­where because it’s diffused.

Nonethe­less, even on for over­cast days, you need to be care­ful. If the over­cast clouds are thin, you still might have one part of the sky where the sun is much brighter than the remain­der of the sky. In such a sit­u­a­tion, you have to be care­ful just as if the sun were shin­ing bright­ly with­out any over­cast. And if the over­cast gets too dark, it can give your pho­tographs a dark cast, which can be quite unpleasant.

Of course, the worst pos­si­ble sit­u­a­tion is a part­ly cloudy day. The light­ing can go from bright sun to dif­fused sun to dark over­cast in a mat­ter of a few seconds.

Keep in mind, there are spe­cial sit­u­a­tions where you can get great pho­tos shoot­ing into the sun. For instance, if the sun is behind a sub­stan­tial amount of foliage, it can make the translu­cent leaves glow with incan­des­cent green. Look for oth­er such back­lit sit­u­a­tions that will give you extra­or­di­nary photographs.

Let me sum up what I’ve discussed.

1. Shoot with the sun behind you stream­ing over your shoul­der when­ev­er possible.
2. If the day is bright over­cast, get out and do some shoot­ing. Con­di­tions are ideal.
3. If you have to shoot into the sun to get a pho­to of the par­tic­u­lar object in the fore­ground, use a fill-in flash.
4. Plan when dur­ing the day to shoot large immov­able objects such as moun­tains, bridges, build­ings, and the like. You want to have the sun behind you when you shoot them.
5. If you can’t move the object to pho­to­graph it with the sun behind you, then posi­tion your­self in a dif­fer­ent place where you can shoot the object with­out fac­ing into the sun.
6. Avoid shoot­ing at high noon when the sun is direct­ly over­head. That’s a sit­u­a­tion where you will need a polar­iz­ing fold­er, which you are not like­ly to have for your phone camera.
7. If you have to shoot into the sun, keep sky or broad reflec­tive sur­faces out of the pho­to as much as possible.

Final­ly, it must be said that this pho­tog­ra­phy rule like all rules can be pro­duc­tive­ly bro­ken. Some­times by shoot­ing into the sun you can get spe­cial effects that you can’t get any oth­er way, and such effects can make great pho­tographs. The one thing you always need to remem­ber is you can always check your pho­tos on the smart phone’s screen, and if it’s not a good pho­to, try again.