We all know that midday photos when the sun is harsh are not nearly as good as those taken with diffused light or with sunrise and sunset lighting. Sometimes, though, it's possible to make successful images even in less than ideal conditions. I photographed this mother cheetah and her cubs around 11 o'clock in the morning in Kenya. This African country happens to sit on the Equator, and this means the sun was virtually overhead at this time of day. However, the cats were shaded by a thicket of vegetation that provided diffused light. The background, though, was sunny, and that was the problem. When I exposed for the cheetahs, the background became blown out. I spent some time in Photoshop toning down the overexposed elements in the distance and adding an out of focus (due to the shallow depth of field from the 500mm lens I used) blue color for the sky. Better that than a white sky. My settings were 1/500, f/5.6, and 200 ISO.
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