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Improve Your Natural Light Photography

Elevate your images with these natural light photography tips – whether working in hard sun, golden and blue hours, or overcast daylight

For the majority of photographers, natural light is where the process begins — and many rely on it for a long time. Across all but a handful of genres, natural light offers masses of potential. But an early lesson creatives must learn is that you cannot bend a scene to your will. Rather, natural light photography is more a case of making the best of what’s available.

Here, we’ll show how to work with natural light. More specifically, what to consider in the harsh midday sun, the soft light of golden and blue hours, and flat overcast clouds.

Always remember, there’s an exception to every photographic guideline. If a moment appeals to you, consider nothing else and document it as you envision. Much can be learned through experimentation.

How to Photograph in Hard Sun

When photographing in daylight under clear skies, contrast can be a challenge, with detail lost in highlights or shadows. Colours can become washed out and it’s unflattering for human subjects. Also, the overall harsh quality can detract from more nuanced elements of an image.

However, with some thought, many of these drawbacks actually become opportunities. Yes, it’s often better to avoid landscapes in these conditions, but eye-catching street, portrait, architectural and nature images are all attainable.

Expose for Highlights

Hard sun creates harsh shadows, so you’ll likely have to prioritise one over the other. Unless the scene is primarily composed of shadow, expose for the brighter areas. To avoid adjusting the aperture, shutter speed and ISO manually, this can be done with the exposure compensation dial. Explore the effect of turning the dial to a negative value — even as low as -5. You’ll see brighter areas of the frame become correctly exposed, while areas of shadow fall away to darkness.

This will undoubtedly influence the subjects you look for and the way you compose. Picture a person walking through a ray of sun on a city street. You could retain detail in the surroundings and have a severely overexposed (lighter) central section of the frame, but it’s better to show the more interesting human element clearly, letting underexposed (darker) areas lead the viewer’s eye there.

Even in the absence of shadows, underexposing slightly in the hard sun can help retain saturation. Bright light washes out colour, so keep the exposure compensation dial in mind when shooting with natural light.

Use Exposure Bracketing

In any instance of strongly mixed lighting where retaining detail is challenging, look to exposure bracketing. With a FUJIFILM X Series camera, go to SHOOTING SETTING > DRIVE SETTING > BKT SETTING then AE BKT or ISO BKT. When you press the shutter, the camera will take three images, varying exposure to the degree of your selected stop value. Choosing ±2 stops will provide significant latitude. As you become more confident in your exposures, you can lower these values.

Natural Light Portrait Tips

Direct sunlight on any face isn’t ideal. It looks garish and tends to accentuate a person’s features in an unflattering way. There are some workarounds, though.

The most obvious is to find an area of shadow, such as under a tree, or a doorway. Dappled light works well, too. The latter, as above, is exposed for highlights in the majority of cases. If working in the sun itself, try backlighting your subject — position the light behind the subject, so they don’t squint; just be wary of any unwanted lens flares. If you can bounce some light onto your subject’s face using a reflector, all the better.

Golden-Hour Photography

There’s little to say about photographing during golden hour beyond some encouragement to make the effort. Sunrise and sunset aren’t opportune times to head out with a camera for many, but with entire scenes bathed in gorgeous, warm, directional light, it’s hard to get a bad result.

The same goes for blue hour, which immediately follows sunset before darkness falls. With both, it’s beneficial to accentuate the colour of the light itself. Try vibrant FUJIFILM Film Simulation Modes like Velvia, or manually shift the white balance towards warmer or cooler tones. To do the latter, press your WB Fn Button, or press MENU OK then find IMAGE QUALITY SETTING > WHITE BALANCE > AUTO. Increase or decrease B and R values towards a preferred hue. Alternatively, try one of the presets — INCANDESCENT cools a scene down, and SHADE warms it up.

Naturally, just after the sun has set, you’ll need to open up your aperture or increase ISO to avoid slow shutter speeds, especially if working handheld. If your camera or lens offers image stabilisation, bring it into play. If you’re looking to continue to the last possible moment, brush up on low-light photography tips in our street photography at night guide.

Making Images in Flat Light

An overcast day is generally uninspiring, and creating images is no exception. It’s well worth exploring, though, with your camera in hand. Once you’ve tapped into the conditions, you’ll find opportunities everywhere.

Flat-Light Portraiture

When diffusing the sunlight, cloud cover essentially acts as a huge softbox. This means that a dull day is the perfect day to make portraits. Without any real directionality to worry about, you can establish your scene purely based on composition. Consider working through a number of backgrounds, guided by the broader aesthetic you’re seeking.

Continuing this idea, you can dress your subject for contrast or neutrality with a bold splash of colour or muted tones respectively. In a sense, flat light is a chance to focus on everything except the light itself.

Photo Compositions in Flat Light

Generally speaking, the scale of your scene will be dictated by the light. In overcast weather, there’s less contrast and any visible sky will appear as a large slab of grey. Depending on the genre you pursue, this could mean going large or tightening up your composition.

Out in a landscape setting, consider passing up a sweeping wide-angle vista and seek graphical, layered compositions with a longer lens. Contrary to the distraction it might be as a key part of the frame, a plain grey sky can serve as a pleasing neutral backdrop for a solo element like a gnarled tree. Typically, challenging areas of woodland are also photographic playgrounds when lit evenly.

In the streets, you won’t find dramatic shafts of sunlight creeping through buildings and isolating passers-by. Instead, entire streets can be photographed within the dynamic range capabilities of your camera, with little loss of highlights or shadows. Consider seeking out crowds and mentally focus on narrative detail.

Light, composition and story are the three greatest tools in a street photographer’s arsenal. When one is lacking, perhaps on a dull day, lean into the other two. Tighter frames led by an interesting subject are still in play.

Monochrome vs Colour

Flat light can be a perfect opportunity to explore monochrome scenes. Trying to save an uninteresting photo with monochrome is all too common, but go in with the intention of accentuating drama using a mono FUJIFILM Film Simulation like ACROS and you could be onto something great.

Further to the previous tip, monochrome photography leaves less to distract from the subject matter. It also gives the appearance of greater contrast, and grey skies will look livelier when they’re not hanging above a colourful scene.

If you choose to remain in a colour profile, seek any bold hues available. A small splash in an otherwise dull scene will draw the eye. This is tougher outside of street and portrait photography, where bold clothing might be found, but it’s feasible for nature.

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