Create light bursts to add sunlight during editing

When you’re unable to capture the best light, it’s possible to replicate the sun flaring bright, hazy light into the lens with some simple editing tricks

Photography is a popular hobby for many reasons.

One that stands out is that it’s something you can do whenever and wherever you are. Days out in the city and walks in the forest are just two examples of when you’re likely to have a camera to take advantage of opportunities as they appear. We all like to be out shooting when the light is perfect – early and late in the day – but this unfortunately isn’t always possible. But even when you’re limited to shooting between mid-morning and mid-afternoon, there is still one way to enjoy a low setting sun – and that’s to create it yourself. The lightburst technique in this tutorial works well for landscape, portrait and automotive images where there’s sky or bright light visible behind the subject for the effect to look believable.

If there’s a solid object such as a wall behind and close to the subject, however, the technique will fail. Stick to this simple rule, and you’ll soon be on the road to lighting success.