Photography Exposure Tips for Harsh Lighting Conditions

Bright sunshine creates harsh shadows that you want to minimize.

Get close to your subject, either physically or with a long lens, and select an area that has the least amount of distracting shadow, then expose for the area that is most free from shadow.

When it's impossible to avoid harsh shadows in a composition, the alternative is to shoot into the sun, placing your subject mainly in evenly-balanced shadow. On a bright day, this will leave your subject well lit, although a bit flat in contrast.

Instead of extremely dark shadows, backlit situations require you to watch for bright highlights. Arrange your composition to minimize those, as well as to add interest, then adjust your exposure for the non-highlighted areas (but, check your histogram or highlight warning indicator if you wish to avoid totally blowing out your highlights. Since the contrast in this situation will be low, plan on making an adjustment in your favorite photo editor after the fact, knowing that contrast adjustment is easy to make in most editors.

One risk in backlit situations is a background that is too bright. You have two choices here: frame your composition so that the bright background is mostly cropped out or, better yet, arrange your composition to have a darker background.

You've crept within range of your favorite bird, but he's turned his head to the bright sidelight, leaving the beak and closer eye in shadow. This is the perfect scenario for using fill flash.

Fill flash will lighten the shadows and put a sharp, bright highlight in the eye.

If your subject is tame (a favorite pet, your spouse, or an inanimate object), instead of using fill flash, try using a reflector to bounce a more subtle light into the shadows for a softer look than delivered by flash.

This digital photography tip applies for "tame" subjects in bright light when no shade is available. Place a light filter between the sun and your subject.

For the filter, use a diffusion panel, a satin white umbrella, or a collapsible light disk. You can find examples from vendors such as Lastolite or Photoflex.

One plus of this approach over finding shade is that it minimizes the contrast between your subject and the background, for a better overall exposure.

In America, the Great Smoky Mountains get their name from the fog that hangs over the mountains. When viewing peaks at increasing distance, they appear more and more diffuse, with muted colors. Artists refer to this phenomenon as "atmospheric perspective" because the natural effect of the atmosphere accentuates the sense of depth in the scene.

When haze, mist, fog, or smog rob your scene of definition, look for a closer subject to highlight in your image. Expose for (and focus on) that close subject, letting the softer, hazier background fade out for the greatest possible sense of depth.

OK, I guess that "avoidance" doesn't really answer the question about how to confront harsh light, but finding times with less harsh light is a valid strategy...and one of the top digital photography tips.

There is a lot to be said for photographing in those "golden hours" around sunrise and sunset, but one advantage relative to dusty, smoggy, and hazy light conditions is that the golden hour warmth turns all of that fuzziness into reds, oranges, and yellows that add drama that is hard to find when the sun is higher.

Harsh light can produce distractingly bright reflections off of water, foliage, glass, crystalline rocks, and similar, non-metallic shiny surfaces. Reflected light rays are polarized by these surfaces, which allows a polarizing filter to effectively block most of the reflection.

Use a circular polarizing filter, screwed into the front of your lens, to reduce glare from these objects. Once your image is composed, rotate the filter until the image shows the least amount of glare. "Circular" is an important characteristic when shopping for polarizing filters, as older, "linear" filters don't work effectively with many camera metering and focus systems..

If you have a point-and-shoot camera that does not accept filters, use a lens from your polarizing sunglasses. Just hold one eyepiece in front of the camera lens and preview the results on the LCD as you rotate the sunglasses.

Another characteristic of polarizing filters is to enhance colors. This is particularly useful for increasing the saturation of blue skies and other colors. In most situations, the increased color saturation will also improve overall image contrast, whether between sky and foreground or between sky and clouds.

This works best when the sun is at 90° to your subject. That is, keep the sun to your left or right for most impact. Then, when you have composed you image, rotate the polarizing filter until you get the best saturation and contrast.

When photographing landscapes, you have probably noticed that is difficult to get good exposure for both the foreground landscape and the sky - cameras simply do not have enough dynamic range to capture detail across such a wide range of light conditions. This is where graduated neutral density filters come to the rescue.

"Grad" filters, as they are more easily called, are clear on the bottom half. The upper half is darkened with a neutral material that only impacts the brightness of your image, not the color. The amount of density varies, depending upon the filter, but 2 stops is a good starting point. The boundary, or transition, between the clear and dark halves is fuzzy so that you don't get a hard edge. The length of the transition may be shorter (designated "hard") or longer ("soft"), depending on the options offered by the filter vendors.

The idea in using these filters is to reduce the amount of light coming from the sky so that you can expose for the foreground and still retain sufficient color and detail in the sky (or vice-versa). Once your filter is attached to the lens, align the transition with the boundary between sky and land. Meter for the area of the image that you want to be best exposed. Or, meter for the overall image with an intent to bring out the best balance of sky and land using your favorite photo editor.

If you can live with a 50/50 split between sky and foreground, then use a screw-on style filter (easier and less expensive) - you can crop the image later if 50/50 doesn't do it for you. You can rotate grads so that the line of transition aligns with your horizon or terrain.

If you want ultimate control, then look for the more expensive filter holders that take rectangular filters, and buy filters of varying density that you can use singly or in combination for attaining the best balance between sky and foreground.

Ultraviolet (UV) rays in the atmosphere introduce a slight haziness into photographs. This is not the haze that you see with your own eyes, but haze that film and digital sensors pick up because they are sensitive to the shorter UV wavelengths that our eyes cannot pick up. UV radiation also tends to give a slight blue color cast to images. As altitude increases, so does the amount of UV radiation that may impact your pictures.

UV filters are intended to cut through that haze as well as reduce any blue impact on your images. If you experience haze in your images that you didn't see when taking the picture, or if images come out bluer than you expect, a UV filter may help when taking pictures in similar circumstances.

Because these filters have good transparency, some photographers always use them as a means to protect their front lens elements from dirt and scratches.