How to Shoot in Harsh Midday Light

One of the first things you probably heard when you first started learning photography is that you should never shoot in harsh midday light. Sunrise and sunset are the best times to shoot, and if you're shooting in the middle of the day, you're wasting your time. But honestly, I think that's a load of crap, and over the last 10 years of photography, I've started gravitating more and more towards harder light in my work because I think it can bring something to your images that sunrise and sunset simply can't. And while it might seem difficult at first, I think learning how to shoot in harsh midday light like this is one of the best skills that you can develop as a photographer. And today in this video, I'm gonna use this beautiful and also incredibly bright city of Lisbon to show you how. And real quick, before we jump into it, all the photos in this video were edited with my Film Vibes preset pack, which I designed to work specifically for hard light scenarios like this. I'll put a link down in the description, and I hope you guys enjoy. Now, one of the most important things to understand when shooting in hard light is that you have to be a little bit more selective with your subjects, because to put it simply, some subjects just look great in hard light and others don't. And in general, simple scenes with a lot of large shapes or negative space work much, much better than overly busy scenes with a bunch of chaotic textures or busy compositions. Take somewhere like this park, for example. This is a beautiful park, and I love spending time here, but there is a ton of foliage here. There's a bunch of trees, bushes, grass, and generally speaking, we love those things. But in hard light, that foliage turns into a mix of hundreds of different highlights and shadows that becomes really chaotic, overly busy, and tough to look at. This is the type of place that's definitely difficult to shoot in hard light, and I probably wouldn't even try. But more simple and minimal scenes with more negative space are a lot easier to shoot in brighter light. Take this beautiful street, for example. Instead of dealing with a million different shadows like we did in the park, here we only have a few core shadows that we need to worry about. Now, not only does it make scenes like this much, much easier to compose, but it also makes those final images much easier to look at as well because they're not overly chaotic and overly busy. And that's why in general, if I am going to be shooting in the middle of the day and the light is gonna be really harsh, I much prefer to shoot in cities or in wide open spaces like beaches because those places have a lot more negative space, which makes them much, much easier to compose in harder light. But if you are out shooting and you're having a hard time capturing those simple scenes, one of the things that you can do is shoot with a longer lens when that light is really bright. When you're using a longer lens, it's much, much easier to hide some of those distracting elements in your scene. And you can kind of pick apart compositions and zoom in on certain areas that just look a little bit better in hard light. Now, I also really like to use the sky as a form of negative space in my photos. But if you are going to do that, you need to make sure that you're being extremely intentional about where you're positioning yourself in accordance to the sun. And that leads me on to tip number two, which is always pay attention to the direction of the sun in your photo. Now, I've talked about this idea of light direction in so many of my lighting videos here on YouTube because it is incredibly important for one simple reason. The direction of your light source in accordance to you and your subject is going to determine where the shadows fall in your image. And shadows are equally as important as light in our image because they create a sense of depth in our photo. If you don't have any shadows in your photo, your image can feel incredibly flat and almost two-dimensional in a way. But when you have areas of light and shadow interacting with each other, you're going to have a photo that not only looks more interesting, but also has a much greater sense of depth, shape, and separation through that frame. And I think there's three main lighting directions that we need to think about when we're shooting in hard light or any light for that matter. And I'm going to use myself and my shadow, or lack thereof, as an example for this section. But the first one is front light. And front light is where the sun is behind you and everything in front of you is nice and evenly lit. So if you're the photographer right now and I'm the subject, you can see this is front lit. Everything here is nice and exposed. And while I do have a shadow, it's directly behind me, so you can't see it. And it's not creating that sense of depth and shape that you would like to have in a photo. Now, the opposite of that is, of course, backlight. And that's where you're shooting into the sun and the sun is between you and your subject, like you can see here. And as you can see, this results in fantastic subject separation and even some nice rim lighting on my hair, but also incredibly deep shadows. And if you do decide to include the sun in your image, you're often going to get a silhouette as well where the background is nice and exposed, but your subject is almost pure black. But I think the magic really happens when you shoot with side light. And that's where the sun is to the side of your subject or just out of frame in your scene. And as you can see, this introduces a ton of beautiful shadows into our image that not only create a much deeper sense of depth in our photo, but they also add a ton of visual interest as well. I'm almost always shooting with side light or backlight with the sun just outside the frame if I am shooting in harsher light, because I think that's what gives my images the most flattering look and the most visual interest in that scene. So next time you're out shooting in hard light, pay very close attention to where that sun is and what it's doing to the shadows in your photo. When I'm out shooting, I'm constantly moving around and changing my position in accordance to the sun, because sometimes even just moving a few feet can completely change the look of your photo. I'll tell you guys one thing, Lisbon is a beautiful city for photography. I've been here for about a month now and I have loved photographing the city. I feel like there's so much here to see and it actually lends itself really well to being shot in harder light as well, which has been really nice because the light has been incredibly harsh here in mid-August. And that leads me onto tip number three for this video, which is expose your subject to the sun. Expose for the highlights while you're out shooting because it's much easier to bring back detail in the shadows than it is to do that in the highlights. Now, when I'm out shooting in harsh light, typically I like to underexpose my photos by half a stop or one full stop. And you can do that by just looking at your light meter and making sure it says minus 0.5 or minus one on your light meter. Now, an even better way to make sure that you're not overexposing your shots is to use your histogram. And on this camera that I've been shooting with recently, this is the Hasselblad X2D 100C Mark II. I have loved shooting with this camera, but I shoot with the histogram enabled. And when you're looking at your histogram, as long as the highlights aren't bunching up and clipping up against the right side of that box, that means your highlights are going to be exposed properly. And the same goes for the shadows on the left side of the histogram. So generally speaking, as long as all of your tones are sitting kind of in the middle of that histogram, that's gonna be the best place to be, but that's gonna be a little bit harder to do in bright light scenarios. So I do typically like to underexpose. And then when I go to edit those images, I'll bring those shadows back up in post. But speaking of the Hasselblad, I have absolutely loved shooting with this camera over the last month or so here in Portugal. And I already posted a full review on this camera. If you guys wanna check that out, I'll put a link down in the description. But if you already watched that, you'll probably notice that I have a brand new cage for this camera, which I am absolutely loving, and it's made by Falkam. And Falkam is actually the sponsor of today's video. But this Falcon cage could not have come at a better time, because if you guys do shoot with a Hasselblad, you know that this is a very expensive camera. And if you're anything like me, you are absolutely terrified of bumping it up against something and scratching up the body. But now I don't have to worry about that. And I genuinely feel so much more relaxed taking this camera out with this cage on, because it perfectly protects it without adding a ton of bulk, and while still sticking with the beautiful Hasselblad design as well. But it also adds a ton of utility to the camera as well. It has a built-in Arca Swiss mount with a quick release system, which makes it really easy to just slap it onto a tripod and start shooting. It has a hidden air tag compartment on the bottom of the cage as well that you can use to track your camera if worse does come to worse. And I hope you never have to take full advantage of that feature. And it also has a removable L-mount that makes it really easy to mount your camera vertically on a tripod, but you can also remove that and attach this little piece instead, which results in just a much more streamlined and compact setup. And that's how I personally have it set up. But I think my favorite thing about this cage is it does all of those things and it adds all of that utility, but it doesn't get in the way of the shooting experience. And for me, the shooting experience is everything. I can still access all of the different features and buttons and switches on my camera. It doesn't get in the way. And I know that my camera is nice and protected while I have it on. So if you do have a Hasselblad X2D-100C Mark II, or you're thinking about getting one, I would highly, highly recommend picking up one of these cages by Falkam. You will never regret protecting such an expensive piece of kit. If you guys wanna check it out, you can click the very first link in the description. Thank you so much Falkam for sponsoring this video and supporting the channel. It is greatly appreciated. But now let's get out of the shade and back into the sun and talk about a few more tips on how to shoot in harsh light. Now in the last tip, we talked about why we should underexpose our photos to make sure that we're not losing out on any detail in the highlighted sections of our image. And yes, that is extremely important. We wanna make sure that we have as much data as possible in that file. So then when we do go to edit that image, we can really manipulate it and craft it into something that we like. However, just because you have all of that detail in your raw image doesn't mean you need to maximize it. In other words, if you have a super high contrast scene, sometimes it's better to lean into that high contrast look instead of trying to maximize the detail and ending up with an image that looks way too HDR, overly detailed and unnatural. And the way that this happens most often is you open up your photo in your editing software and you see that the highlights are really bright and the shadows are really dark. So you take that highlight slider, you bring it all the way down, you take the shadow slider, you bring it all the way up. But just because you can do that doesn't mean it necessarily looks better. It is totally okay to clip your blacks and lose out on detail in the blacks. And the same goes for the highlights as well if you think it makes that final image look better. For example, this is a photo that I shot here in Lisbon a few days ago, and this was a very high contrast scene and it definitely wasn't the most optimal lighting for this shot, but it was such a good scene and I really wanted to try and salvage this image. So of course I did bring down those highlights and I did bring up those shadows, but I didn't do it as much as I could because I think it would have made this image look a little bit too overly detailed and unnatural and I think this image came out really well because I tried to tread that line of contrast very closely. But this is also true for lower contrast scenes as well. If you have a scene that's lower contrast and you try and add a bunch of contrast to that scene, it can look a little bit weird. I think it's always important for us to take a look at our image and look at that contrast level and try to enhance that contrast level without going too far with it and making it look unnatural. Okay, but what do you do if that scene has too much contrast? Say you're shooting in the middle of the day and the sun is literally directly overhead and the light is absolutely terrible and way too harsh. Like in this situation here, you guys can see the shadows under my eyes. This is absolutely horrific light. Well, there's a few different things that you can do. And first off, if you wait just a few hours until like two or 3 p.m., that sun is gonna dip even a little bit lower in the sky and that's gonna give you much more directional light that's gonna be a lot easier to work with. I think this is a really good time to bring up the nuance of midday light. It's not just sunrise, midday, and sunset. Midday is a big chunk of the day and even just a few hours can make a huge difference in the light in your images. But let's say you have no other time to shoot, you're in the middle of the day and you have to shoot right now, what do you do? Well, you get in the shade and you use reflected light instead of direct light to light your subject. Now, this is especially relevant if you're doing something like portrait photography, but light reflects off of absolutely everything, especially bright surfaces like buildings, white walls, sandy beaches, sidewalks, basically anything that's a lighter in color, the light is gonna reflect off of that surface and back onto your subject. And as you can see in this scene, the light looks a lot better than the scene that we've just shot in because I have these big white buildings in front of me reflecting this nice soft light on my face. But it's also important to remember that color is light as well. And just as light is gonna bounce off of that subject, so is color. So if you're shooting in front of a big, bright red wall, well, you're probably gonna have a lot of red light being cast back onto your subject. But if you're shooting in more of a neutral surface like white or light yellow or light cream, you're gonna have a much more neutral color light coming off of that surface. So if you're shooting at smack dab in the middle of the day, it's high noon and the sun is directly overhead, instead of trying to fight that light, sometimes it's better to just find some shade and use reflections to light your subject instead. However, sometimes that super hard light is exactly what your photo needs. And that's why this next tip is to use hard light to frame your subject like we see right here. When you're shooting in hard light and you can find a location where that hard light is being directed into a very specific area, that is an opportunity to capture some incredible photos. And this is something that's common in so many of my portfolio pieces. When I find that hard light, I wait for the subject to walk right into the perfect part of that frame. And I use that light to frame that subject and capture a much more dynamic composition. Once again, this works a lot better in places like cities where that light is being directed through something like a small alleyway and you have people kind of walking through that scene. There's a lot of places like this here in Lisbon because Lisbon has a ton of these old little streets and it's a perfect opportunity to capture photos like this. So if you guys are shooting in a place where you can find that hard light being directed into a very specific area, use that hard light as a way to frame your subject and create a much more dynamic composition. And bonus points if you account for their shadow in that composition as well. Now, of course, we can't talk about hard light without talking about color as well. And I don't think there's a better place in the world to talk about color than here in Lisbon, which they say is the most colorful city in the world. But hard light and color absolutely go hand in hand. And you'll often find that when you're shooting in harder or harsher lights, the colors in that scene are really going to pop. And that's typically because of the enhanced contrast in that scene. When you enhance contrast, you also enhance saturation and color as well. So if you are out shooting in the middle of the day and you're really struggling with that harsh midday light, one of the things that I like to do is just stop putting my pressure on myself to capture those perfect compositions and instead look for interesting colors that I see in the environment and find some creative and interesting ways to capture those colors. Maybe it's more of an abstract shot, or maybe I'm looking for complementary colors that are positioned right next to each other and capturing a photo of that. Yes, it's definitely harder to shoot in super hard light, but you do get the benefit of having colors that really, really pop. And I think it's always important to be on the lookout for those colors while you're shooting. But of course, capturing color in camera is only part of it. And one of the things that you'll find when you're shooting in the middle of the day and the light is really bright is that light actually lacks quite a bit of color as opposed to shooting at sunrise or sunset when that light is nice and golden. But this brighter light also means we have deeper shadows and brighter highlights, which means that photos shot in the middle of the day respond really, really well to adding color in later using the color grading panel in Lightroom. Now, I've already made a super detailed tutorial about the color grading panel in Lightroom and why I love it so much. I'll link it up there if you guys wanna watch that. But in short, when I'm shooting in really bright light and I have a lot of highlights in that image to work with, I love adding warmer tones into those highlights to add a ton more color depth and interest to that photo. So instead of just adjusting the temperature slider, I love adding those color adjustments in using the color grading panel. And I'll often add warmer tones into the mid-tones as well to really warm up that image. And then I'll add the complementary color of orange or yellow into the shadows, which is blue. And this is gonna create a lot more complementary color in that image and just create so much more color depth in that photo as well. There's a ton of different color combinations you can do with the color grading panel, but this is the one that I use the most. And it's also the one that you'll find in a lot of my presets in my FilmVibes preset pack. Every single preset in that pack has color grading applied. So if you guys do wanna check those out, they work fantastic for hard light scenarios like this. I'll put a link down in the description and I hope you guys enjoy it. ♪♪♪ Well, it has been a long day of photography here in Lisbon and the sun is starting to get pretty low in the sky. But if there's one last tip that I have to leave you guys with before I close out this video, it's that if you do find yourself shooting in harsh midday light, be creative and think about how you can utilize that light to your advantage to capture the photos that you wanna capture. Now, in this video, we've talked about some of the ways that you can do that, but by no means is the list in this video exhaustive. There's so many different things that you can do to make hard light work for your specific photos. If you guys think I missed anything core in this video, please drop a comment down below letting me know. I would love to chat about those down there. And maybe if I make a part two, I will include those in this video. But I really hope you guys found this video useful and you got some value out of it in some way. And also, I'd love to hear what you think of this particular video format, where I'm kind of out and about shooting in cities and talking about the things and trying to show you in person. These videos definitely are a little bit harder to make, but I really enjoy making them. And I hope you guys enjoy them as well. But that's all for this one, guys. Thank you so much for making it to the end of this video. I have one more video that I'm gonna shoot here in Lisbon before I leave, so stay tuned for that. And I will see you very soon in the next one.