Use the shadows

Sometimes the best pictures are lurking in the shadows, particularly on a sunny day! The sun rises higher in the sky during summer than in the rest of the year – and this can be a real problem for photographers. Once the sun has risen more than 45° above the horizon, you end up with toplighting: everything is lit from above, and you don’t have the soft shadows that help to show the three-dimensional shape and texture of a scene. Cloud cover can help, diffusing the sun to create more of a softbox effect – but on a blue-sky day, much of the day can be written off for architectural or landscape photography.

The solution is to head to the shade. Using the shadows cast by buildings you get a soft, even illumination – which is created by light reflecting off walls, roads or the sky itself. These shadowlands are perfect for portrait photography. Bright sunlight creates unsightly shadows on people’s faces, and forces subjects to scrunch up their eyes in an unflattering way. The softer lighting found in the shadows on a sunny day is perfect for pictures of the locals or your family – and keeps your camera clicking through the harsh hours of the middle of the day.