A Simple Trick for Taking Pictures in Harsh Light

This weekend we went pumpkin picking. It was a beautiful fall day and I didn’t have any sessions scheduled so we headed to one of our favorite places – Sun High Orchards! It was about 1:00 in the afternoon, not an ideal time to take pictures, but I brought my camera anyway. I knew I could still get some good shots if I just tried this one simple trick for taking pictures in harsh light. Put the sun behind your subject!

If you try to take pictures with your kids facing the sun, they’ll squint and that’s not cute. See?

My simple trick for taking pictures in harsh light is to just turn them around. Or move yourself. Whatever you need to do to put the sun at their back! Here’s another example. My older daughter is facing the sun. The colors are richer and you can see just how blue the sky is, but she is squinting which doesn’t let any light in her eyes and there are ugly shadows on her face. The sun was behind me here.

I moved to the other side of her and asked her to turn around so that the sun was behind her now. No squinting and no ugly shadows on her face. Because I adjusted my settings to brighten her up, the sky is more washed out than the other shot, but I’m ok with that. That’s the beauty of shooting in manual. If you were to shoot like this in Auto, the camera would try to expose for all that bright light coming in and your subject would end up really dark.

Try this the next time you’re out! I’d love to see your results.