7 quick tips for photographing outdoors in bright sunlight

Don’t be put off photographing in bright sunlight

Light is at the center of every photograph. Without light there can be no photograph, so photographers need to find ways to use light – manipulate, create or block the light. Working with too much light is as much of a challenge as working with too little light.

Photographing in bright sunlight can yield stunning results, if you know the tricks of harsh sunlight photography.

Direct sunlight often feels like too much light.

However, when it’s now or never and you can’t choose a better time to photograph, but the light is hard, high in the sky and casting horrible shadows, you can still get great photos.

You just have to think a little harder, maybe look around at your options and get a little more creative.

Download my Sunny 16 cheatsheet of camera settings for photographing in bright sunlight…

Ideally, when photographing outdoors, we’d just stick to the best times of day, the golden hour, or the blue hour, and be happy with that. But if you’re:

Photographing a wedding, you generally don’t get a say in when the happy couple emerge from the church
On holiday somewhere, you can’t not visit the attractions, just because it’s a bright sunny day
What about a beach holiday? You can’t not photograph the kids for most of the day, just because the light isn’t perfect for you

Luckily, if you’re on safari in Africa, most wildlife would agree with you that the start and end of the day are the best times to be out and about. The African sun is strong and you might not be used to photographing in harsh direct sunlight. (I had the reverse problem – I struggled to adjust to the UK’s very soft light when I first moved here from South Africa.)

7 tips for outdoor photography in bright sunlight

These tips will help you embrace photographing at any time of day. The first three tips are about avoiding photographing in hard light. Tips 4 – 7 are about embracing photographing in bright sunlight and using it to your advantage.

Find shade
Use doorways
Create shade
Reflect the light
Create some light
Shoot into the sun
Use the angle of the light

Portrait with hard shadows from bright sunlight outdoors — Taken at 11.26 on a very sunny day in direct sunlight. The bright sunlight made him screw up his eyes and it cast the harsh shadows across his face.

1. Find shade on bright sunny days

Not all shade is created equal.

The ideal shade for portrait photography is solid shade from a building or a tree with thick foliage, not the dappled kind of shade that you can get under a not so leafy tree. While dappled light is great for camouflage, it’s not a photographer’s friend as your subject will be patchy.

If you position your subjects under a tree, face them out to the light, with the tree behind them. This is called open shade… because it’s open. Remember, light is still hitting the scene, even if it has been diffused by the tree, and the direction of the light still makes a difference.

The next photo was taken 30 seconds later.

Shaded portrait photographing in bright sunlight outdoors — For this shot, he moved into the shade of the wooden shelter, so no harsh shadows. However, I like the texture of the wood brought out by the direct sunlight skimming across it in the above photo. It’s great for wood, but not faces.

2. Use doorways when the sun is harsh

This doesn’t have to be an actual doorway to a house. The entrance to a tunnel, an archway, just inside a barn door, or even inside a car all work really well for portrait photography. Basically, anywhere that has a roof overhead, like in the photo above.

Indirect light spilling in from outside will illuminate your subject beautifully. I say indirect, because if sunlight pours into the doorway and onto your subject, the light will still be harsh. If, however, the doorway is in shade, the light that filters in will be soft and perfect for portraiture.

Position your subject just inside the doorway facing out and photograph them from the outside. This is another example of open shade. The advantage of doing this is that you cut out the bright sunlight coming from directly above them, so they won’t have “racoon eyes”.

Diffused sunlight portrait outdoors — My assistant shaded the model from the bright sunlight. You can see that the shade material was black by looking at her shoulders – black material near a subject creates negative fill

3. Create your own shade

For the times that you don’t have a convenient building or tree on a bright sunny day, try to create shade for photos.

For example, if you’re on the beach with surfboards, incorporate the surfboards into the shot in a way that creates shade. If your subject holds a surfboard above their head it creates a handy bit of shade over their face. A beach umbrella would be great too – just be aware of the colors as they’ll add a color cast to your subject.

Hard direct sunlight portrait — In this shot, without shade, you can see how bright the sunlight was

I suggest always taking a foldable diffuser like this one to outdoor photoshoots to block sunlight from hitting your subject directly.

Sunny day portrait outdoors in shade — We stood in the shade between two beach huts for this shot on a sunny day. The white wall of the beach hut behind me reflected back into his face and reduced the shadows.

4. Reflect the sunlight

For portraits on bright sunny days it’s better for the sun to be behind your subject, so that:

They don’t screw up their eyes
There aren’t any harsh shadows on their faces

So because the light’s behind them, you need to find a way to bounce light into their faces, which is why you need a reflector.

Although using an actual reflector like this one is the most obvious way to reflect light coming from behind your subject, it’s not the only way.

You could reflect light with:

A white sheet
Or cardboard
Or find objects in the environment that reflect light.

For example, look for sunlit white walls to use as a reflector. The sunlight bouncing off the wall will be soft and even. Make sure it’s a white wall, as the color of the wall will also be reflected. A green wall, for example, will cast a green color over your subject, making them look ill.

Wet ground reflects light back very well. Glass surfaces are also great. Anything shiny is great for reflecting light, but be aware that the shinier the surface, the harsher the light and therefore the harsher the shadows will be.

Soft light outdoor portrait on sunny day — Even though we were in the open shade of a building, one side of her face is brighter than the other. That’s because the direction of light was from camera left (see point 1).

5. Create some light

Using flash off camera or on camera to fill in shadows helps to take care of those “racoon eye” shadows under the eye caused by sunlight overhead.

The confetti throw shot at a wedding is a perfect example of when to use on camera flash to fill in shadows. You can’t exactly arrange the bride and groom facing a convenient white wall and you certainly can’t stand there with a reflector like this one in front of them.

Bright sunlight photography tips using backlight — In the above shot I photographed into the sun, so she is backlit. For the shot below she turned to face into the light. I used the building to block out the sky for both photos.

Bright sunlight photography outdoors — I took these photos at 12.24 and 12.42.

6. Shoot into the sun

Although it’s not the best time of day for photographing outdoors, as long as it’s 30 minutes either side of midday, you’ll be able to turn your subject away from the sun so that their face is in shadow. It’s helpful for them as that they don’t have to strain their eyes, but actually it’s even more helpful for you!

This way you won’t have harsh shadows travelling from their nose across their face or from their eyebrows downwards.

Bonus tip – make sure you use a lens hood, but also try to shade the front of your lens so that you don’t end up with unwanted lens flare or a cloudy image from the sun hitting your lens. Even better if you can position yourself in a patch of shade or have a helper block the sun from hitting your lens.

When you shoot into the sun, colors will be faded and the sky in particular will be blown out. If you’re okay with a blown out sky, great. If not, find ways to exclude the sky from your image – look for trees or buildings, or shoot on the slope of a hill to block out the sky.

Also, use a reflector to bounce light back into your subject when photographing in bright sunlight.

7. Use the angle of the sun when photographing in bright sunlight

Lastly, embrace the bright sunlight. Some subjects look great in harsh sunlight. It’s just a matter of being aware of where the sun is and what shadows are being created by the angle of the sun, then adjusting your subject’s position accordingly.

If you know how to use portrait lighting patterns, just pretend the sun is a giant studio light and go for it.

If you’re photographing a landscape or architecture, it might be that textures are highlighted by the angle of the sun, which would be great.

If the sun is behind you, the scene’s colors will be more saturated.

Further reading in our direction of light series:

1. Backlighting portraits

2. Side lighting portraits

3. Front lighting portraits

6 important things to remember on sunny days…

1. ISO – keep your camera’s ISO setting low at say 100

2. White Balance – set your camera’s white balance to sunny

3. Metering – the best metering mode to use for portraits on sunny days is spot metering and meter off the area you want correctly exposed, especially if you’re shooting into the sun. If you’re photographing a person, meter off their cheek so that their skin is correctly exposed.

4. Shadow – make sure your shadow isn’t in the shot. It may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how easily this can be overlooked.

5. Shoot in manual mode or use exposure compensation – especially if you’re shooting into the light as the tricky lighting conditions will fool your camera’s metering system. If the sun is behind you, the camera will find it easier to meter, unless you’re on a beach or in the snow. Then all that light bouncing around will confuse it.

6. Lens hood – Make sure you use a lens hood to block sunlight from hitting the front of your lens and creating flare. I’d actually advise always using a lens hood, even if it’s just to protect the front of your lens from accidental damage. My lenses would definitely have picked up a few scratches over the years without lens hoods.

If you have any questions about how to photograph in bright sunlight, let us know in the comments.

Also, I love good news, so if my sunlight photography tips have helped you to understand how to make the most of sunny day photography, share that too.

Photography Lighting