Monica posted on August 19, 2009 11:20 :: 2162 Views
Last Sunday, the bright sun was vanquished by fast approaching storm clouds, and thunder rumbled in the distance.
My friend glanced my way, grinning broadly. “Want to grab the cameras and head out?” he asked.
Well, of course I did. The worse the weather, the better the photos.
Most people make the mistake of thinking that “blue bird days,” the kind with sunny skies and bright sun, are the best times for shooting. That kind of weather may lift the spirits, but it doesn’t always produce photos to brag about later on.
The biggest culprit: reflection. You might not think so, but if you’re shooting nature, petals, grasses and leaves reflect sunlight right back at you. The resulting photos look contrasty and sometimes lack depth. It helps to use a polarizer, but they usually work best when the sun is 90 degrees to the subject—and subjects tend not to always be in that correct location.
Another problem is most people laze away the mornings, have a nice lunch, and then decide to go shooting. When the sun’s out, right after lunch is a horrible time for photography. The flat glare, the lack of shadows, the washed-out color—it’s all there, guaranteed to make a potentially beautiful photo a disaster—and makes polarizers nearly useless. I had that proven to me when, through no fault of my own, I had to shoot South Dakota’s Badlands at noon. The results were sepia-toned images that lacked all of the colorful vibrancy that lurked in that desolate land when the light conditions were right.
Sunny days also bring the Murphy’s Law challenge: whatever you want to shoot will very likely be in front of the sun, where everything is thrown into silhouette. That’s one of the frustrations of shooting along Lake Superior’s North Shore in Minnesota. Everything is “into the sun.” Shooting the breakwater in Two Harbors, the ore docks, the boats on the horizon, the ducks along the shore—it all means facing the sun. Although the sun still has its silhouetting effect on cloudy days, it’s not quite so drastic.
When it’s cloudy, colors pop. They sometimes appear almost neon. There are no harsh shadows to create metering dilemmas. It’s like the subjects are immersed in a layer of color dispersement, and they look good from any direction. Believe it or not, I prefer shooting fall leaves on cloudy days.
I recently visited a park along Lake Michigan, one filled with flower beds full of every shade of color imaginable. It was a very gray day. The sky and its clouds looked like fractured slate, and a fine mist was precursor to the rain that was imminent. I glanced about, and saw that people were reluctant to take their cameras out. They felt gloomy.
I just smiled to myself, then put the long lens on for some far-away close-ups (a necessity when you don’t have a macro lens) and indulged myself for nearly an hour. The result: vivid photos that gave no clue to the roiling clouds overhead.
Take a step beyond that to stormy days, the kind where thunder rumbles and lightning shimmers behind your eyelids; when day looks like dusk, and storms loom like Tolkien characters, riding the winds of drama.
I rode through some farmland in weather like that. I boosted the ISO and focused on the dark, swirling clouds that camouflaged the even darker heart of the storm. Farmers’ fields crouched, bracing themselves for the onslaught. Big barns were dwarfed by a sky where the imagination can see monsters. The wind flattened my t-shirt against my body, and forced a spread-eagle stance for stability. Rain drops the size of half dollars splatted onto the dirt road, where little poofs of dry dust exploded into the air.
But I metered and snapped and reveled in the weather, and the photos that emerged were full of power. If nature reflects God, then I was seeing his might.
What a welcome, dramatic diversion from a light and sunny day.
By Monica Isley
Monica Isley, a respected columnist and photographer formerly in the greater Duluth, Minnesota area, soon heading for Door County, Wisconsin. View Monica's photography by clicking here.
Monica Isley is a former newspaper reporter/columnist/photographer who once stalked the Lake Superior shoreline in northeastern Minnesota, camera in hand. She now lives in Sturgeon Bay, Wis., where the summers are warmer and the winters are milder than she's used to, but where photographic prey is just as available. Besides this column for JustNorth, she writes a blog called Monica's Pen at http://monicaspen.wordpress.com/
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