Finding the Best Light for Your Outdoor Photography

A Primer for Understanding Different Lighting Scenarios

Finding the Best Light

Light is the fundamental building block of photography. It’s been said that there is no such thing as bad light, there is just light. I tend to agree, but this doesn’t tell the whole story. While I believe you can find things to photograph at any time of day, and in any weather, I know from experience that for different scenes, certain types of light and weather are more conducive to creating interesting images than others. For every scene or subject, there are scenarios that bring them to life in beautiful ways. Some moments really are ‘better’ than others, depending on what we like capturing and our personal tastes.

This section of the guide aims to help you understand different lighting scenarios in order to make better decisions when you go out with a camera. If photography is about being in the right place at the right time, which is another aphorism that needs further elucidation, then it’s clear that our success rate will be higher if we put ourselves in situations where we are excited to make photographs. That means being at a location when the light is doing things that get us excited and helping to tell the story of what we are photographing.

A beautiful scene, to be sure, but the dull, flat midday front light wasn’t especially compelling to me, especially since I’ve seen the scene in light like the image below.

Is this image better? For my tastes and the type of light that I enjoy capturing, yes. For certain folks, they might prefer the more documentary feel of the image above. There is no right or wrong.

What excites you and makes you want to make images, or what conveys the story you are wanting to tell, will be different for everyone. Below, you’ll get a bit of a menu to choose from and what you can expect to find in different types of light. In choosing and responding to each moment or scenario, we reveal our personal style, tastes, and interests.

What is good light? To be honest, it depends. The best explanation I can offer is that we know it when we see it. Often, it’s what attracted us to the scene and made us want to make a photograph in the first place. Maybe it reveals the texture or form of an object in a flattering way. Maybe it creates a dreamy, ethereal mood. Maybe it showcases a landscape in a way that makes it feel incredibly dramatic and inspiring. Maybe it simply stays out of the way and doesn’t distract from what we are trying to show.

The thing is, there is no ‘best’ type of light for everything, only light that works in the moment for a particular scene. It’s also true that we respond differently to different aesthetics, moods, and dynamics at different times.

Sometimes the ‘best’ light isn’t what you’d expect. You don’t always need a red sky!

Planning

While it’s fine to simply go out at any time and react to whatever type of light is happening, I think it helps to plan. That way, we give ourselves more opportunities to photograph in the types of light that we enjoy capturing, or that we feel would work for a particular scene we want to photograph, to convey a certain quality, characteristic, or mood that we want to capture.

In planning, we may consider the time of day, time of year, and the possible weather we could encounter. There’s a lot to consider, and while I think this part of the practice is super fun, it can also be daunting! If we get too picky, and I’m certainly guilty of this, we lose sight of the many opportunities that are available even when the conditions aren’t what we would consider ‘ideal’. My goal, and what I hope to encourage in everyone, is to chase the light and conditions you love capturing, but remain open to whatever presents itself.

While I didn’t plan on finding this exact composition or arrangement, I did expect to encounter a rainbow when I visited Five Islands on this occasion. I’ll teach you how to forecast different weather conditions in the next post.

Being in the Moment

Once I’m on scene, I try to respond to whatever is happening in front of me. Sometimes I have to move around until the light really works. Sometimes it’s not immediately obvious where I need to be or what about the scene really excites me. When I’m at my best, any preconceived notions of what I expected to find or capture are eschewed in favor of open-minded attention, curiosity, and intuitive decision-making.

While out photographing sunset, I came across a barred owl and made this image, which was way better!

I often like to walk around and see the scene from as many angles as I can before making decisions. Often, I either don’t have my camera out, or have my camera off the tripod so that I’m not encumbered. I’ll watch to see what the light does as I move in an arc or circle around a subject if I can.

I also like to anticipate dynamic elements such as where the sun will rise or set, or what the scene will look like as a storm clears and the sun comes out. It’s often the most dynamic, changeable light and weather that is the most exciting to capture, but also demands the most skill to read and react to. At these times, there’s a fine line between planning/anticipating and acting/participating.

After over an hour watching the phases of sunset in this field, while being eaten alive by mosquitos, the winning moment came when the colors in the sky matched the colors of the lupines in the field below.