Photography Lesson: Shooting at Mid-day - Raleigh, Cary, Family Photographer

Read any textbook on photography and you are bound to come across the theory that says you should only shoot early in the morning and 2 hours before sunset. Those are considered the golden hours for photography. Yes its much easier to obtain a better exposed photo at these times of the day because you are not competing with the powerful sun and the shadows it creates. However it is possible to get a great photo at any time of day if you know how to work around the sun.
Here is an example of what I did yesterday to get great photos while on a picnic at 1pm.

This photo shows you what you shouldn't do. Notice the sun is over my(the photographer's) right shoulder. You can tell this because of the sun on the subjects left side of her face. Also notice how she is squinting because she is staring right into the sun. Also look at the background grass how dull and dark it is compared to the other photos below. I always try to brighten up my backgrounds when I shoot.


Second photo, we both spun 180 degrees. I had subject block the sun by holding the umbrella behind her. It created a neat effect with the sun behind it. Of course I edited this one in Photoshop. Photos do not come out of the camera looking like this not even with a $2300 lens! You must know what to do in post processing to fine tune a photo. This is the only photo I edited the rest are straight out of camera so you can see the difference.


The next set of photos I placed her under a tree. There was a large space of shade around the tree. And you can see by the colors in the grass where the shade ended. I shot this one quick standing up just to see it first in my camera.


Next photo I got on my stomach like her and shot straight on, zoomed in to fill the frame with her. Eliminated all clutter of blanket and umbrella. Now she becomes the focus of the photo.



Then I pulled out my really bad jokes to try to get some more natural looking photos. She got pretty silly fast though. She was more interested with playing with her cousins then doing a photo shoot with her crazy aunt


I really wanted a photo of the 3 of them. Knew there was no way they were going to sit for me so we started a contest of hanging on the tree and I got all three of them, no they aren't all looking at me and smiling. But thats not what I wanted I wanted them being the crazy kids they were that day. You just have to figure out ways to make photos fun for kids.