A Little News

You may have noticed if you have looked through several of these posts that I like to shoot into light sources. I even like to have the sun in a photo and use my strobes to overpower just enough of the sun to light my subject. Shooting into the light does not always work. You have to choose your light source carefully. If you shoot into the sun you really have to pay attention to the quality of light you are working with and how you are going to handle the shadows. At The Decatur Daily we have a strong aversion to running silhouettes. That means if you shoot into the sun you have to make sure your shadows have enough detail to pass muster with the editors.

This post has three examples. One uses available light only. The second uses a combination of sun light and a single strobe. The final shot uses the sun and two strobes. There is no really right or wrong way to do this unless you just make a mess. If you make a mess, well, that was the wrong way so try again. This first photo is of a kid warming up in the bullpen at baseball practice. We were doing a story on this team getting ready for the season. After shooting my assignment, I saw this cool shot and decided to give it a try. The only reason I could pull it off is because of the low angle of the sun and the warm, diffuse light. Earlier in the day, I would have had to use strobes and it would not have had this look. If memory serves, this was shot with an 80-200 on a D2H with no manipulation except to mind my exposure which was 1/800th at f4, ISO 200. When you shoot into the sun you usually have to be very conscious of flare. That was not the case so much here because of the sun was so low in the sky and the dust in the atmosphere diffuses the light and creates the cool color.

The second shot is basically a one light shot into the sun. using a 17-35 at 17mm on a D2H. When I am shooting into the mid-day sun, I tend to use the wide angle to be able to make the sun very small in the frame. You can shoot with long glass into the sun, it is just easier to do if you are using wide glass. The other problem with a long lens is you would really have to be a long way beneath the subject this early in the day. One nice side effect of using the wide lens, is the deeper blue you can get in the sky. The lens is covering a lot of area and the further from the sun, the darker the sky. The strobe in this shot was snooted with a homemade 8 inch snoot to really zero the light on the kid’s face. The exposure, as it often is during the mid-day, was 1/250th at f22 and ISO 200. You can control the depth of color in the sky by dropping you ambient exposure just a bit under. The sky was probably about -2/3 below the flash exposure for this photo.

The final shot is a wide angle, worm’s eye view shot with a 17-35 at the 17mm setting on a D2H. I used two Nikon speedlights on stands at cross light angles. This just means that one light is pointed directly at the other light. The light to camera right is a bit stronger because it is slightly closer than the one on the left. This shot was done in early afternoon and the light was high. My exposure was 1/250th at f22, ISO 200. By the way, whenever you shoot into a light source whether it is your own strobe or the sun, use manual exposure mode. Otherwise, your exposure will bounce all over the place and you won’t be able to settle in and bracket your exposures in anything like a logical manner.

Photos Copyright The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are not necessarily those of my employer.