Shooting in difficult light

Learning goal

In the hard light of midday, with no helper tools in your bag, you will be able to shoot a good portrait through the choice of place and direction. You will explain why overhead sun produces the most difficult light on a face, learn to move from direct sun into open shade, to find the threshold light facing the open sky at the edge of a shadow, and to avoid the dappled light filtering through leaves, shoot the face in soft light in its own shadow while putting the sun behind the person and dropping an edge light on their hair, open the exposure for the face in this situation with face compensation, prevent flare with your hand or a shadow, and take advantage of light ground, sand or a wall filling the face like a natural reflector; you will also check how these solutions turn out on different skin tones.

The question

At noon you are walking with your cousins through the market streets of a seaside town, and you have neither a reflector nor a diffuser with you. You want to shoot your two cousins in front of the stone wall by the sea. The sun is almost overhead: under both of their eyebrows are dark hollows, under their noses short, sharp shadows, and both are squinting. One's hat has buried the upper half of their face completely in darkness, while the other's forehead and the tip of their nose shine with sweat and sun.

Looking at the frame on the screen, you are about to decide that no portrait can be shot in this light. What do you do in the midday sun? In this lesson we will talk about ways to get a good portrait out of difficult light without tools, only by choosing place, direction and exposure.

Context

The midday sun is the light photographers complain about most, and there is a good reason for this. But life isn't always lived in the golden hour: a wedding, a trip or a family gathering most often falls in the middle of the day. Instead of giving up shooting at this hour, knowing how light behaves at this hour and changing places accordingly is most often more effective than a bag full of tools.

In the previous lessons we learned to send light back, spread it and cut it; these required a helper and tools. This lesson tells the ways to reach the same goals without tools: hiding from the sun instead of softening it, putting it behind, and using the surrounding surfaces like reflectors.

Simple explanation

Why is overhead sun difficult?

Overhead sun is the sun standing close to the highest point of the sky around noon. Light coming from this angle falls on the protruding parts of the face, the forehead, nose and cheekbones; the hollow parts, the eye sockets and the area under the chin, it leaves in shadow. The shadows are short, their edges are sharp, and they create not the shape of the face, but only a few dark patches. Because the sun hits the eyes directly, people squint; sweat and the skin's natural oil reflect the sun as shiny spots.

All these problems come from the direction and hardness of the light, not from the intensity of the sun. That is why the solution also lies in changing the direction or hardness of the light. Without tools there are two ways to do this: stepping out of direct sun into soft and directional light, or putting the sun behind the person and shooting the face in its own shadow. Both ways are as easy as a few steps or turning the person half around.

How do you move into the shade?

Open shade is shade that direct sun doesn't reach but that the open sky sees, and so is lit by soft, even light. Standing in the shade of a building, an awning or a tree, on the side open to the sky, lights the face with a large, soft source, the sky itself. This light is most often a little bluish; adjusting the white balance for it, or correcting it against a white surface in the shade, brings the skin back to its own color.

Threshold light is directional, soft light obtained by standing inside a shadow, right at its edge, and turning the face toward the open sky or a sunny area. Standing on a doorstep, at the edge of an awning or on the shaded side of a market street brings the light from a single direction, like a window, and gives the face shape. There is also a shade to avoid: dappled light is light filtering through the leaves under a dense tree and falling on the face as small, bright spots. These spots break up the face; you need to shift a few steps into even shade.

How is the sun put behind?

Turning the person so that their back is to the sun turns the sun into an edge light: the hair and shoulders are outlined with a bright line, while the face is lit in the shadow of the person's own head, by soft light coming from the sky and the surroundings. The person no longer squints. But the camera meters by looking at the bright background and leaves the face dark. Face compensation is setting exposure compensation to plus to open the exposure not for the background but for the face; most often a value between one and two stops is needed.

Two side effects are expected in this situation. When the face is exposed correctly, the background, especially the sky or the sea, becomes very bright and can blow out; you need to accept this or choose a darker background. If the sun hits the lens directly, flare and a loss of contrast follow; keeping the sun out of the frame and shading the top of the lens with your hand or a hat prevents this. Light-colored pavement, sand or a white wall in front of the person, on the other hand, works like a natural reflector by sending light back to the face.

What do you look for on different skin tones?

The face compensation needed when you put the sun behind changes with skin: to see detail in the face of dark skin, you may need to raise the compensation more, and this blows out the background more. This decision isn't a loss but a priority: if the face's detail matters more than the background's detail, exposing for the face is right. On light skin, on the other hand, sun coming from behind can pass through the edges of the ears and the wings of the nose and light them with a reddish glow; this is a natural result of light passing through the skin and most often looks pleasing.

Hats and dappled light cause different problems on every skin. A hat's brim can bury the upper half of a dark-skinned face in darkness without detail; lifting the brim slightly or turning the face a little toward the sky opens the eyes. The bright spots of dappled light create blown-out white dots on light skin, and on dark skin patchy spots much lighter than their surroundings; in both cases, moving into even shade is the cleanest solution. For the shine of sweat and oil that appears on the forehead and nose in noon light, a napkin or a paper tissue is most often the cheapest solution.

Visual evidence

You take your cousins from in front of the wall by the sea to under the stone arch at the entrance of the market. Inside the arch, standing right at the edge of the shadow, you turn their faces toward the market's sunny square: threshold light falls on their faces from the side and the front, like a window. They no longer squint, and the sharp triangle under the nose has turned into a soft shadow. The light is a little bluish; when you set the white balance against the arch's whitewashed wall, the skin tones return to their own color. You ask your dark-skinned cousin in the hat to lift the brim a little; their eyes and eyebrows come out of the shadow.

Then you go down to the beach and place the two of them so that their backs are to the sun. Their hair is outlined with a bright edge; the light-colored sand in front of them sends light back to their faces. In the camera's first metering the faces are dark; when you set the compensation one stop to plus, your light-skinned cousin's face is exposed correctly, and the edges of their ears glow with a reddish light. For detail on the shadow side of your dark-skinned cousin, you raise the compensation to one and a half stops; the sea and the sky turn into a bright, near-white background, and you accept this. When you shade the top of the lens with your hand, the milky white veil of flare also lifts.

Common mistakes

Summary

Overhead sun lights the protruding parts of the face and darkens its hollows, makes the eyes squint and leaves shiny spots; the solution lies not in the light's intensity but in its direction and hardness. Moving into open shade or into the threshold light at the edge of a shadow gives soft, directional light, while dappled light should be avoided; putting the sun behind the person drops an edge light on the hair, lights the face with soft light in its own shadow, and light ground fills the face like a natural reflector. In this situation, opening the exposure for the face with face compensation, giving more compensation on dark skin, and checking the hat brim and flare protect the face's detail on every skin before the background's brightness.

Mini assignment

In this assignment you will try four solutions at noon without using any tools.

1. Shoot someone in the midday sun facing straight toward the sun, and look at the state of the eyes, the eye sockets and the shiny spots.
2. Shoot the same person in the open shade of a building or an awning, then right at the edge of the shadow with their face turned toward the sunny area; set the white balance against a white surface in the shade.
3. Place the person with their back to the sun; expose the face correctly by setting face compensation to plus, and shade the top of the lens with your hand.
4. Shoot a frame under a dense tree, then shift a few steps and shoot again in even shade, and compare the two frames.

Check yourself

• Which solution gave the softest light without the eyes squinting and the eye sockets going dark?
• How many stops of compensation did it take to expose the face correctly with the sun behind, and what happened to the background?
• Does the face of the person you photographed, on every skin, carry detail in the eyes and on the shadow side?

Glossary

Mini quiz

1. What is the main source of the problems overhead sun creates on a face?

• A) The color of the light
• B) The direction and hardness of the light
• C) The camera's ISO
• D) The lens's focal length

2. What makes open shade soft?

• A) Direct sun
• B) Leaves
• C) The open sky lighting the subject being a large source
• D) High contrast

3. Why does the camera's metering leave the face dark when the sun is behind the person?

• A) The camera meters for the bright background
• B) The sun lights the face directly
• C) The lens is dirty
• D) The white balance is wrong

4. Under a dense tree, there are patchy, bright spots on a dark-skinned person's face. What should you do?

• A) Set the compensation to minus
• B) Shoot the frame horizontally
• C) Put a hat on the person
• D) Shift a few steps into even shade without spots

Answers

1. B — The problem isn't the sun's intensity, but that it comes from overhead and hard.
2. C — The open sky is a large source; it lights the face in the shade softly.
3. A — The bright background misleads the metering; it is corrected with face compensation.
4. D — Dappled light breaks up the face; even shade gives clean light.

Summary card

• Overhead sun: short hard shadows, squinting eyes, shiny spots.
• Move into open shade; at the edge of the shadow turn the face toward the light: threshold light.
• Avoid dappled light.
• Put the sun behind: edge light, face in its own shadow; face compensation, more on dark skin.
• Sand, pavement, a white wall are natural reflectors; cut flare with your hand.

Bridge to the next lesson

The portraits you made with threshold light under the arch came out beautifully; in the evening you and your cousins go into a restaurant. At the table by the window, on one side is the last bluish light of the day, on the other the yellow bulbs on the ceiling, and one side of your cousin's face is cold blue, the other warm orange. When you set the white balance for one, the other looks strange. What if there are two different colors of light in one frame? The last lesson of the module talks about mixed light and how to decide which one to correct.