Lesson 1b. Position of the Sun

As I mentioned briefly in my last post, the position of the sun can help determine the best place to shoot from when shooting outdoors.

Ideally, whenever you can, you want to put the sun at your back. This will typically put the most even light on your subject. See the below diagram.

As you see, position A has the sun behind, and is throwing the most light on a subject moving towards the position. Here is an example of a shot with the sun at your back and the subject moving towards you.

Now position B (Side lit) is not necessarily bad, but has a chance of putting a shadow over half your subject if the subject is moving towards you. Proper exposure can help, but if not exposed correctly you could end up with something like this.

Now, position C (back lit) can be one of the most challenging lighting situations to deal with outdoors. Shooting back lit can wreak havoc on exposure, and if not dealt with properly, the results can be less than desirable. Here is a typical example of what the camera likes to do when shooting back lit.

As you can see, the subject is very underexposed. When you shoot with the correct subject exposure, you tend to get something a little more like this.

Even with the proper manual exposure for the subject, I am not a fan of shooting back lit. The entire photo looks washed out and over bright. Sometimes you cant help where you have to shoot from, so learning to deal with proper exposure when shooting back lit is essential, but I recommend avoiding it whenever possible.

Next time I will cover backgrounds, and how to get the best and cleanest backgrounds.