Photography Tips for Shooting Outdoors in Different Weather Conditions
Weather on the day of a shoot can make you dread your session. Sometimes though, unexpected weather can add more drama, mood, and artistic appeal to your photographs. So, the next time you’re at a session and the weather changes, rise to the challenge, and get inspired!
Shooting in Sunny Conditions
Shooting in sunny conditions can be tricky. Always plan your session to be in the morning or late afternoon when the sun is low in the sky. If you absolutely must photograph a session during midday, create a soft lighting condition for yourself. You can achieve this by using a scrim if you have two helpers to hold it. Simply hold the scrim above and to the side of your subject, tilted on a diagonal to block the sun from reaching your subject. The beauty here is that the scrim will diffuse the harsh sunlight and cast a gorgeous soft natural light on your subject. For extra affect, have another assistant bounce light up to your subject’s face using a reflector placed in front of, and below your subject.
If you do not have helpers, you can take materials to build a simple outdoor studio. If you prop up two V-flats to create a half square shape, then lay sheer white fabric over the top, you’ve created a pop-up studio with beautiful soft lighting.
If you’re unable to take V-flats or create a pop-up studio, find shady spaces, maybe nearby trees or between buildings. Usually, it is best to keep your subject’s back to the sun, and use a reflector, or flash (but ideally a reflector), to bounce light back onto the front of your subject. This creates a situation where your subject has beautiful hair-light from the sun, and nice catch-light in their eyes from the reflector. I am a huge fan of natural light. While some love the affect of an off-camera flash, I prefer to manipulate natural light because it looks softer and more natural.
Shooting in Overcast Conditions
Usually with overcast, beautiful photos are much easier to accomplish than with full sun. Just remember to keep an eye on the shadows on your subject. Even where there is not direct sunlight, there will still be shadows. You can turn your subject to face the direction that offers the most flattering light.
Shooting in the Rain
While I personally prefer not to take my equipment out into the rain, (as this can cause mold and other issues for your lenses), it is possible to take precautions to help protect your equipment. Look into buying a rain sleeve for your camera and lens. Also, research which types of equipment are sealed to be weather resistant, and which are not.
My go-to method of dealing with rain is to reschedule the session or move the shoot indoors. It’s amazing how beautifully the soft light coming in through a rainy window can illuminate a subject. Just be sure to change your settings as soon as you move in doors, so you don’t forget and end up losing out on great shots. Remember to shoot with a shutter speed no slower than 1/200 and use a wide aperture to allow as much light into your camera as possible. This will require you to crank your ISO. Fortunately, most equipment nowadays can handle a high ISO setting. You may have some grain with the high ISO, but it’s better than blur from a slow shutter. Noise software can help clean up the grain in your shots in post-processing. (Nothing will fix a blurry photo. No amount of sharpening software. Nothing! So, make sure your images are in focus and as sharp as possible, even if it means shooting with a high ISO).
When I find myself in this position, I usually take several photos with only natural window light. Then, I take several photos bouncing my flash. Make sure you bounce from a white surface (usually the ceiling). If there are no white surfaces in the room, try bouncing your flash off a reflector.
Shooting When It’s Snowing
Oh, how beautiful it is to shoot a wintry outdoor session when there are big, beautiful snowflakes falling. It is important to remember to have a very fast shutter, so the snowflakes do not drag on your subject’s face leaving devastating white streaks that you can’t fix. You can use a wide aperture (as long as you’re able to lock focus on your subject through the snowflakes), and a high ISO to allow extra light. If your photos are a bit dark, you can always brighten them up in post-processing.
Something to watch out for in snowy conditions - you may catch a snowflake smack-dab in the center of your subject’s eye. Sometimes, it’s big enough that it completely blocks their eye. In these instances, I make sure to take plenty of photos in continuous shooting mode. This increases the chances that, in at least one photo, your subjects’ eyes will both be showing.
If you find yourself in the predicament that you didn’t capture a photo where both eyes were clear of snowflakes, don’t fret. You can do some copy-paste-and-flip magic in photoshop. I’ll do a tutorial on this soon.
Stock photo provided by SquareSpace
Changing Conditions
I’ve covered most conditions here. But none are quite as annoying as conditions that keep changing while you’re at your shoot. One second, it’s sunny and you’re shooting with an insanely fast shutter, and the next second the sun hides behind the clouds and you’re shooting black photographs. Or the opposite – you have your aperture wide open for shade and then the sun peeps out and overexposes your shots.
When the conditions keep changing like this, just remember to stay on top of your settings the whole time. It can help to have a couple of settings manually programed into your camera prior to your shoot, so you can quickly switch back and forth from “sunny” to “cloudy” settings in an instant. And in the worst case scenario, remember that underexposed images are better than overexposed images. You can bring back a dark photo (at least somewhat) but if the photo is overexposed, you’ve likely lost the shot. You can try to bring down the “highlight” and “white” sliders in post-processing, in an effort to recover overexposed photos. But usually, you’ll find that half of the image, or more is gone.
I hope this article helped. Please refer back for more articles with helpful photography tips!
