Digital Camera Master

In my experience, people are more disappointed with their outdoor photography than any other kind of images. They complain about the washed-out sky—it was very blue when they took the picture—as well as ugly shadows on people’s faces, bad exposure, and highly contrasting, harsh shadows that go through their pictures.

Why do all these problems occur? At the most basic level, it’s because your digital camera works differently from the way your eyes do. When you look around outside, your pupils—the apertures of your eyes—change diameter constantly to adjust for varying light conditions throughout the scene. When you look toward the sky, your pupils close so you see rich, blue colors. Look under a tree, and your pupils immediately open to help you see in the deep shadows that are down there. And then there’s the fact that your eyes have a much wider range of exposure values than a camera does. When you press the shutter release on your camera, it has to choose a single exposure level and try to depict the entire scene with that one reading—regardless of how dramatically the light changes throughout the picture. It is a miracle that we can get good pictures at all. That said, there are many strategies we can employ to get great pictures outdoors.

A. Beware of the Sun
When you take pictures outdoors, always check your watch. By that I mean that there are better and worse times during the day to take pictures. Perhaps the worst time of all is midday, when the sun is directly overhead. The noon sun creates extremely harsh shadows and casts unflattering light for almost any kind of photographic project. People look their worst when you photograph them between about 10 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon, when the extremely bright light (particularly in the summertime) can tend to overwhelm a digital camera.

The alternative? Shoot early or late in the day. Photographers traditionally like the warm colors created by the sun in the late afternoon, but the morning is almost as good. If you are traveling on vacation, for instance, and want to get really great pictures, plan your photo exploits for the early morning hours and then again for late in the day. Heck, it’s too hot in the middleof the day to pay too much attention to photography anyway.

If you make a conscious effort to take your best pictures before or after the high noon sun, you’re halfway there. You also need to think about the position of the sun in the sky. In the old days, new photographers were taught to take pictures with the sun to their back. The reason was simple: the sun would best illuminate the subject. Unfortunately, if you were photographing people, the sun would blast that light in the face, causing them to squint. That made for some mighty ugly pictures. A much better solution is to position the sun over your left or right shoulder. But no matter where you put the sun, don’t shoot into it unless you are intentionally trying to photograph a sunset or a silhouette.

B. Add Fill Flash
While most people think of their camera’s flash as something to use at night or in the dark, it’s also a great way to improve the look of your photographs in the daytime. Set your camera’s flash to its forced flash mode, and use it to shoot portraits and other outdoor photographs. You’ll find that the flash fills in shadows nicely, dramatically improving the quality of your images. You’llbe surprised, in fact, at how much fill flash can do to improve photos that you thought were pretty good to begin with.

C. Reflect Some Light
A second source of light is just the ticket to eliminate shadows, reduce contrast, and even out the lighting in your pictures. Sometimes you can do that with fill flash, and sometimes a small reflector will do the job.

A reflector is often better than a flash, because the light from a reflector is softer, and that typically makes better pictures. In other words, it’s always better to use natural light—and that includes reflecting it—than to use an electronic flash.

There are two ways to get into reflectors: the cheap way and the expensive way. Believe it or not, you don’t need an expensive reflector from your local photo shop in order to move light around—you can have a lot of success using a glossy white sheet of poster board. Purchase a sheet of poster board from your local art supply store for a dollar or two to try it out. The problem with poster board, of course, is that it is often difficult to carry around. For a more compact reflector solution, pick up a photo reflector at your local camera store. Personally, I really like PhotoFlex Litediscs. These clever little reflectors fold up so small that you can almost put them in your pocket. Take them out of the bag, however, and they pop open to a variety of handysizes. I use a Litedisc that measures about 24 inches in diameter, and I find that’s a great size for most of the things that I want to photograph.

When you’re ready to take a picture with your reflector, you’ll probably need some help. It’s fiendishly difficult to hold a reflector and take a picture at the same time. So instead of trying some feat of photographic gymnastics, ask an assistant to hold the reflector such that light reflects from the sky onto your subject. Try to hold the reflector to minimize shadows or
illuminate the dark side of your subject.

Reflectors serve a second important purpose as well. When you’re out in the field trying to take a picture, the wind can sometimes get in the way. You’ll notice this most often when you’re trying to take a close-up of a light, bendable subject like a flower. Just a little breeze can create an out-of-focus and blurry macrophoto. The solution? Compose your picture so that you can use the reflector not only to add light to the scene, but also to serve as a wind break. That’s right, reflectors can block the breeze and give you a more stable picture.

A common way to use a reflector is to hold it roughly parallel to the ground, just under a person’s face. That throws light upward, into the shadowy areas of the face, giving you softer, more even illumination.