Outdoor Photography
When photographing in the outdoors, one needs to work with ambient light as the main light source (generally). In such a scenarios you can obviously not have much of a control over the lighting conditions. You need to work with the existing light, which is affected by the position of the sun, the clouds and the relational positioning of the subject. Obviously we cannot have a control over the position of the sun or the clouds. That leaves us with positioning the subject as our most versatile tool.
The classic rule of outdoor photography tells us to keep the subject in front of the sun, meaning keep your back to the sun and position the subject in front of you. The subject would be well-illuminated in this case, and moreover you would eliminate the risk of lens flare (which occurs when the light source is in front of the lens behind the subject). This is a fail safe method to get good exposures. However, make sure that if you have a large area of the sky behind the subject, you lock focus on the subject by half-pressing the shutter before you fire. Also, the exposure can go haywire if the camera was focused on the sky instead of the subject. In such case, you would get a well-exposed sky and an under-exposed subject. To take things further, that is exactly what you should do if you want to photograph a silhouette!
If you wish to experiment with outdoor lighting further - well, wel need to break the rule we just taught you! Lets say we are shooting a portrait. Have you ever seen outdoor portraits where the sun creates a kind of halo effect in the hair of the subject - the classic ’sunshine in your hair’ look? If you want to shoot such a portrait, wait for the time when the sun is low on the horizon. Twilight is too late, around 4pm should do fine in most countries. The sunlight should have started to turn yellow by then, but still bright enough for a good exposure - and just NOT bright enough to create a lens flare. So - we have a light source-subject-camera arrangement here. Look through the viewfinder and position the camera-subject combo in such a way as to catch that light in the hair. This works very well for brown and blond hair. Also, zoom in as much as you can. Not only are longer focal lengths better for portraits in general, but they provide just the right effect for the sunshine in your hair effect.
If you wish to shoot outdoors at night, you have no option but to either use flash lighting, or long exposures. In case of the latter, you will need a tripod, or a support of some kind to place the camera upon. Using natural light in the outdoors, is however the best light source you can have. Just as long as you can either wait for the right time (for the right lighting), or position your subject to suit your photo idea.
A sunset in Goa, India
