Many photos that I take are outdoors, and whether i'm taking a shot of a landscape where I want everything to look in focus or a portrait where I want to blur the background to draw your focus into the subject, the main thing that decides what the photograph will actually look like is the available light. Of course the majority of the time this means working with sunlight and working with the sun raises many challenges for a photographer, whether you are taking a picture on your phone or are the wedding photographer who is being paid to capture priceless special moments. Most of the time when we are snapping away ourselves we take the light from the sun for granted, we pose our subjects in front of what ever we are wanting in the picture and take the image. Our phones do a great job of getting focus, selecting settings for  a good exposure etc but one thing that our phones can't do is change the quality of the light to achieve a more pleasing look. Sunlight presents a challenge because our cameras have something called dynamic range. While what we see ourselves may look perfectly acceptable camera sensors are more limited than our eyes and generally can capture details in shadows or highlights but can really struggle doing both at the same time, especially as the highlights and shadows move closer to white and black. If you have taken a photo inside a room but then the beautiful blue sky outside becomes white in your photograph, or you expose your picture for the sky and then inside the room is very dark then you will see what I mean.

Over exposed sky in this castle shot. Sky is bright blue with a few clouds but the overexposed area looks like full bright cloud with no detail.

In the above image the wall is of the castle is exposed fine but the blue sky is blown out to white and certainly not what I was looking at. With portraits we run into problems with dynamic range, usually on bright sunny days where the sun is overhead and casting shadows on our subjects meaning the highlights are too bright and the shadows too dark which produces a very high contrast image which isn't always the most pleasing thing to look at. Because of something called the inverse square law it means that the difference between the light area and shadow area is also very abrupt and hard edged. This is hard light.Cameras will struggle capturing detail in both light and dark areas resulting is bits over and under exposed.

Now if its a quick picture that's just going to be posted on social media it may not be a big problem but if you are wanting a soft light airy feeling which is popular for many portraits then it becomes a serious issue.

So what can you do about it? Well you could move the subject so they are facing the sun fully which will remove shadows and flatten features and as our eye relies on shadows to reveal form and dimension in the things we see this may not be desirable. Alternatively moving the subject into shadow and not facing the sun will help as the camera can expose much better for these conditions. If the subject is in shade the camera can lighten things and have a much more balanced and pleasant final image, however the shade will still be darker than may be desired. This is when a professional photographer will start looking at how to lift this shadow area. This may be through a reflector to direct available light into the shadows or using a flash or off camera flash or similar.

If it can't be fixed in camera then there's the possibility of lightning an area in post production to achieve the desired balance between light and darker areas and if done skilfully will look the same as an in camera solution so it depends on what the photographer can do and also what is available at the time.

If you want to make your own phots look better then look at the highlights and shadows in your image and think what could help reduce the contrast between the two. Maybe there's a light coloured building nearby, a white van, a light coloured road etc that can bounce light into the shadows or you could move your subject into the shade beneath a tree, canopy, or the shade from. a building. Have a look around and see if there's something nearby you can use. If all else fails make the picture black and white as once colour is removed the contrast between light and dark is much more pleasing as an image and adds interest.

if you are interested in me taking your natural light portraits then get in touch to discuss how I can help you get the images that you want.