soak up the sun

"I'm gonna soak up the sun
Gonna tell everyone
To lighten up I'm gonna tell 'em that
I've got no one to blame
For every time I feel lame
I'm looking up I'm gonna soak up the sun" ~song by Sheryl Crow

I just get these lyrics with every fiber of my being. I need sunlight like I need air.

Perhaps living in a colder, wetter, climate than some amplifies my search of the light. I never take the sun for granted. It is a real need of mine. One that I feed through photography.

If the sun is shining, you can bet I will be pointing my lens to the sky, shooting straight into the light,capturing the magic that only sunlight can supply. Manifesting itself in beautiful images of rays, sunbursts, rainbows, and baths of warm light, also known as flares. I clearly remember capturing my first flare and I was hooked.

Whenever I am in need a rut breaker, that is my go to move. I go outside, aim at the sun and shoot! It simply feels good. I am so drawn to images of light and flares that i started the Flare Fridays group on flickr. A place where we can all celebrate the beauty of light magic. Many ask me tips on flares. There are SO many different types of flares I find it hard to give a simple answer. One tip I find useful is time of day. I find it easier in the early morning hours or evening hours, when the slant of light seems to produce such beautiful results. High noon can be tricky,but not unattainable. Don't get frustrated, just keep on shooting and tilting your camera ever slightly to catch wonderful prisms with your lens.

I can'texplain why I love it so, but the images seem to warm me as much as the sun. They give me an instant boost of happiness.

Are you a sun worshipper too? Show us what you've got! Go on out and shoot up at the sky. What light magic have you captured lately?

Image and words courtesy of the ever-popular Kristen Zecchinelli (aka Mainemomma) who shares a great tutorial on Flare on her blog. Check it out!

Golden Light

There's a specific time each evening when the light is perfect and everything has a beautiful golden glow. Right now it's about 7pm in my area (I'm sure that there's a similar golden time each morning, but I wouldn't know because I don't get up that early). I try to schedule all of my photo sessions to start at about 6:30pm so I can be sure to catch it. And I've been experimenting more lately with shooting toward the sun during this time of day. It definitely takes more thought in terms of settings and exposure, but can produce some really gorgeous results. I've been noticing some shots in our Flickr pool that clearly utilize this golden time of night, but I'd love to see more! Go experiment and show us your results.

sunday school: fill-in-the-flash

I know that many of us here are natural light shooters who adore super fast prime lenses like the magical 50mm f/1.8 (or f/1.4 if you're lucky).  Let's see the hands of those of us who have raised our noses ever so slightly whenever witnessing someone using their camera's built in flash.  Now let's see the hands of those of us who would much rather embrace the blur than use a flash.  Yeah, I thought so, and my hand is in the air along with many of you. 

Considering that our chosen symbol for the sisterhood is a beautiful big old flash bulb, I've decided to make friends with my flash and to apologize for all those years of neglect and contempt.  And you know what?  I've actually found that our flash (even the built-in camera one) IS our friend, and that if you take the time to figure out its capabilities, you can take better photos.

One situation in which a flash as simple as the one that came with your camera will come in quite handy is when you are shooting in bright glaring sunlight.  Unless you're shooting exclusively in the shade, you will find that many of your shots have harsh shadows.  You can minimize this by using just enough flash to fill in the shadows especially if you are shooting into the sun.  This is a technique called fill flash.

I played around with my aperture, shutter speed and flash compensation to get the photo above with fill flash.  Without the flash, the photo would have looked something like this.  Pretty dull, huh?  For those of you who love shooting into the sun for that pretty sun flare, try using flash next time, especially if you have a person in the foreground with their back to the sun.  Most digital cameras these days have either a fill flash feature or flash compensation feature that allows you to control the brightness of your flash .  You'll probably have to play around with your settings a bit before you get the result you want, but you'll probably find it well worth the effort.  I know I did.

Finding photos taken with flash in the Shutter Sisters Flickr group pool is like pulling teeth, but I did find this one by Angela (angs*photos), this lovely portrait (with the flash stopped down -1.3) by Kathy (work2snap) and this adorable baby shot by Lawyer Mama [Steph].  How about the rest of you?  Have any flash pointers, or images you want to share in which the flash proved to be your friend?

Sunday School: Get Your Flare On

 

Speaking of aperture, I admit that I'm a wide-open shooting junkie.  My aperture is normally set to f/1.4 or f/1.8.  I couldn't figure out why anyone would ever want to shoot at a narrower aperture.  Recently, however, I was inspired by this photo of a starry moon (straight off of the camera, no less!) by the talented Rachel Schell to explore the other extreme of the aperture spectrum (the narrow end), and that is how I finally figured out how to get my flare on.

I saw that Rachel took her photo at the narrowest aperture (f/22) and with a 30 second exposure, and it dawned on me that this made perfect sense.  The narrower the aperture, the longer the exposure you can use, and that's how you get those lovely rays in the form of star-shaped flares, instead of the round blobs of light I normally get when shooting directly at a light source.

This little trick took what would've been a boring night shot and turned it into the bit more dreamy and star-filled photo you see above.  I've been having lots of fun with this, especially since I discovered that the technique works great for taking sun flare shots as well.  If you've never tried this before, I highly recommend it.  My tips for night shots would be to use a tripod (or the ground, as I did in my photo above), to set the camera on timer or use a remote to reduce camera shake, and to play around with different combinations of aperture, shutter speed and ISO settings to get the flare and exposure you want.

So how about you all?  Have any interesting flare you'd like to share?  If you happen to try out this technique for the first time, please share your results with us!

Superhero Photo Challenge: Shoot into the sun

photo by Anna Kuperberg

I am a self-taught photographer and every once in a while I get a little insecure about the fact that I don't know much about F-stops and shutter speeds. I'd love to be able to walk into any situation and instantly know how to set my camera for the perfect exposure. But alas, digital came around just in time! and now I get to simply play and experiment and know just enough to get what I want but not too much to lose my sense of play. And then there's that handy little screen that shows you what you're getting. Thank god for the little screen!

One "rule" someone told me many moons ago and I had never questioned was this: Do not, I repeat, DO NOT shoot directly into the sun!! Your subjects will turn out dark, you might have lens flare, the picture will be terrible and you will look like a total hack. Did any of you out there believe this too? Are you blinding your friends by having them look into the sun like me?

When I fell in love with Anna Kuperberg's photos I noticed how brilliantly she used sunlight. And I want to highlight the word, used... she didn't just tolerate the sun or work around it like I did, she really uses it to her advantage and gets the most extraordinary images shooting straight into the sun. (The photo above is from my maternity portrait session with her)

This week's challenge is in two parts. First, I want to see your best shots shooting right into the sun (or having the subjects head just blocking it) Get some lens flair! Have some fun... I also want to hear your tips for getting great images this way. Do any of you know how to use the sun to your advantage? I would love to hear. (And if you are using flickr, please tag your photo with superhero photo challenge. Your shot will end up on this page.)