Usually nature photographers try to avoid harsh, direct sunlight on animals, landscapes, birds, etc. When there is no choice but to photograph when the sun is bright in the sky, then the best option is to use the light source as front lighting. In other words, have the sun come from behind you. This will fill in most of the shadows on the subject that would otherwise become black in the contrasty lighting with a sun coming from any other angle. Notice the black shadow behind this black-collared barbet from Botswana. That is acceptable. Had some of the bird's face and feathers been in deep shadow, though, this wouldn't have worked. I took this picture at about 3:15pm which meant the sun was past the zenith and heading toward the horizon. That's the only reason this shot works. I took this with my medium format film camera in 2000 before I went digital, and shooting birds with a camera that is manual focus, manual exposure, and manual film advance was a huge challenge. This barbet hung around the lodge in Botswana during 'tea time' in the hope that it could find a few crumbs. I used a 500mm Mamiya telephoto lens which was equivalent to about a 300mm lens in the full-frame digital format. I used a tripod, and my settings were probably f/8, 1/250, 100 ISO.
0 Comments