Light 3: Overcast Skylight.

Every time we are shooting in the sunlight, the bright sun offers us huge amount of natural light as well as harsh shadows. If you are taking the advantage of the free bright light, you have to take the shadows as well. It's a package deal. The fill-in flash cannot always minimize the effect too.

Here comes the natural solution for harsh shadows: OVERCAST SKYLIGHT

Best overcast skylights are available on those days when the sun is high and the sky is covered with pale grey clouds. Those days, you will never have to bring out your flash to hide the dark shadow patches. Beautiful portraits: simply, naturally! This soft light not only helps to create brilliant portraits, but capturing minute architectural details also.

Overcast or rainy days are great to capture nature also. Go out to the garden, have a splish-splash, shoot the brilliant colors of nature saturated to optimum. This is the time when grass is at its greenest, and the dandelion is at its yellowest.

This "mother of all softboxes" is not without problems, though. Too much of sky in your pictures may look boring, how much exceptional they may be. So, try to include as little sky as possible in your shots.

This shot, although came out nicely, is a bit boring because of the flat white sky.

OVERCAST COOL TIP: Overcast skies are slightly more "blue" than normal skies. So if you are using a film camera with normal daylight film, use an 81C warming filter. And if you are a digital camera user, simply turn the "white balance" to cloudy.

Light 2: Portraits in sunlight.

You have gone to visit a nice museum with your girlfriend; you have clicked some photo inside. But outside, there is a piece of nice architecture, which you want to shoot with your fiancée beside it. No problem, you take out your camera, ask her to stand beside it, and click you go. You are really happy that the shot has turned out great.

After you’ve come back, you look at the enlargement of the shot, and your girl friend has dark ugly shadows beneath her eyes and nose and chin. Something like this one:

But you have nothing to do now, than to cry in desperation “Why me?” and bang your fists on the desk.

Relax; it is a common problem, not with you alone. Professionals deal with this by bringing out large diffusers. But to us amateurs, it is but a ridiculous and impossible option to carry huge white screens on our shoulders.

Our option is the flash. Many will find it difficult to believe that firing the flash is required even in daylight, when there is so much of natural light, but the flash is really helpful to cut off those unwanted shadows beneath the eye, chin, etc. The flash is filling up the shadows, right? That’s why we call it “fill flash”.

Not only flash fills up the shadows, it adds a glint of light to eyes of the subject. The light is called “catchlight”. It makes the eyes of the subject much livelier and the portrait more interesting.

Another good option can be to wait for near sunrise or sunset, if you have ample time.
Because just as in the case of landscapes, low sun creates flattering warm glow, as well as interesting shadows.

PORTRAIT COOL TIP: Try to avoid firing the flash when shooting portraits in sunset or sunrise. This time the light is red and warm, the bluish light of flash can make the portraits look unnaturally cold.

Next post: OVERCAST SKYLIGHT

My introduction to photography.

They say, it’s all in the genes.

May be it’s the truest explanation for my passion about photography. My grandpa was an artist, and a photographer. I have seen his works, but not him in flesh and blood. When I was very small, he passed away. Leaving his works behind, for us to see, and be amazed.

Never did I imagined, I would be a photographer, when I was a child, or even till I was an adult. I did not have a camera of my own till I was 18. One of my cousins gifted a Canon point-and-shoot at that age. The moment I gripped the machine and looked through its view-finder, I was sure this is the right present for me. I went to a tour of Rajasthan with that cam, like every other family goes on holidays.

I clicked away happily, with the first camera of my life, and many rolls of film. I captured every thing I liked. Every house, every tree every local with their strange attire fascinated me. I shot the traditional ones, with me and my family as the main subject and the environment as a minuscule background. And I shot some frames which I liked the way it should be. I shot almost 150 shots, in the entire trip. It would have been much more, if my dad had not stopped me for from “overclicking” many a times. Actually he was not sure how the shot will come out after we developed them. (Speaking of that, even I was not very sure about the results! ;)

After we returned, the rolls were developed, printed. And to the amazement of my dad, and me, the pics proved to be great! And what more, the whimsical shots of mine were generally better than the traditional ones.

But how?

I did not have any idea about composition; neither did I have any professional training in photography. The only thing was, I think, my genes, which I carry from my granddad and my love for photography. These two things made sure I was clicking right and the compositions were just fine.

After that, many suggested I should have some formal training in photography. But I did not. Instead, I got myself an SLR, and searched the internet. I found some resources which gave me enough knowledge and right momentum to be a professional photographer, not to mention , along with a great deal of practice.

Today, when I decide to start a blog, I want it to be about photography. Where I can share my knowledge, which I have gathered from the net, with the young budding photographers. And also the much better and experienced lensmen, will help me to enhance my knowledge, by posting comments, if they come across my blog.

Isn’t it the nicest thing about this internet thing, that we can come together and discuss issues which we could never do without meeting each other?