Adapt to changing conditions

Make the most of each type of weather and time of day

Whenever a photographer chooses to work outdoors, they are susceptible to whatever conditions the ambient environment provides them with, so must learn to be flexible in their approach. Settings and compositions that work for images shot at dawn are incompatible with those taken under the midday sun, but also subtly differ for sunset lighting. Equally, what works for scenes bathed in light from clear skies will fail to extract the potential from an overcast landscape. Dawn and dusk images are favoured by landscape photographers for their warmer, directional lighting, however the low sun angle creates problems with lens flare and can introduce exposure challenges. meanwhile, noon lighting is flat but undiffused, which makes maintaining highlight and shadow detail difficult, while simultaneously presenting a risk of a ‘snapshot’ atmosphere. The best solution to all of these problems is to carefully select which subjects you photograph in each lighting condition. Rural landscapes and coastlines are often best suited to ‘golden hour’ lighting, as they contain more soft textures such as foamy water and delicate vegetation. In the harsher light of midday, modern cityscapes are an ideal focus, due to the reflective surfaces and angular lines of the architecture. meanwhile, it is an essential photographic skill to be able to make the most of any weather. Cloudy days produce diffused light, which is perfect for macro images, but tends to produce a lifeless landscape devoid of texture and form. In these situations, isolating one area of the scene picks out any small points of interest and forces the viewer to look closer. In misty or rainy scenes, making a subject of the weather itself and focusing solely on atmosphere is a tried and tested professional technique.

“Isolating one area of the scene picks out any small points of interest”