How to photograph on cloudy days

As we all know, the sun doesn’t shine every day, which is a shame for photographers, as so many forms of photography rely on at least a certain amount of sunlight. Even just a shaft of sunlight—never mind a whole sky-full—provides not just illumination but also contrast, colour saturation, energy and a sense of three dimensions. Cover the sky with a thick blanket of cloud, and everything can become rather flat, featureless, dull and lifeless. It's no wonder many photographers just put the camera away on grey days.

But should we give up when the sky clouds over? Aren't there at least some forms of photography that work well under cloudy skies, or perhaps are even better under such conditions? The answer is a big Yes, and this article explains the what, why and how of photography under cloudy conditions.

It's all a question of choosing the right subject matter and style to suit the weather. Let’s see how we do that.

 

The cloudy mindset

The first step towards successful cloudy day photography is a positive mindset towards these sunless conditions. Not surprisingly, we all feel a lot better when the sun’s shining—more positive, more energetic, readier to seize an opportunity—a feeling that can evaporate when it all turns a bit grey. From a photographer's perspective, the world around us looks a lot more vibrant and cries out to be photographed when drenched in sunlight rather than draped in dullness, so it's no wonder that many photographers simply pack up when the sun disappears.

Such a reaction to clouds is understandable but rather a shame because while the loss of sunlight does indeed close many photographic doors, it actually opens several others. The key is for the photographer to be clued into this, ready, and happy to switch tactics and subject matter when weather conditions change.

Be nimble, versatile and open-minded. Don't close your mind to scenarios that don't include sunlight.

But what might those scenarios be?

• Outdoor portraits
• Woodlands, gardens and parks
• White water
• Details and close-ups
• Building interiors

 

Outdoor portrait photography

The soft, even lighting provided by cloudy weather is ideal for outdoor portrait photography. Jawlines, noses and brows are all softened and made less prominent, and even skin blemishes can be less obvious. It’s quite a contrast to the results obtained on a sunny day, when the harsh light will set up strong shadows and highlights around many facial features, resulting in an unflattering image.

For this reason, even when shooting on a sunny day, it’s normal to photograph the subject in the shade of a tree or wall in order to mimic the soft light of a cloudy day.

It is also true, however, that a grey sky and a dull landscape in the background behind your subject can drag down an otherwise potentially good portrait. So don't use a wide-angle lens for cloudy day portrait photography. Instead, hone in on your subject with a telephoto lens (say about 100-200mm), not only to concentrate on their head and shoulders but also to both blur out and minimise the amount of landscape and sky visible. To ensure that everything behind your subject is blurred, use a wide-open lens aperture (about f/5.6 or wider) and make sure you have focused on their face.

 

Woodlands, gardens and parks

While it is true that photography of many general landscape views, including that of highly forested countryside, is best done in some form of sunlight, this is certainly not the case when you're photographing inside a woodland. Although, when viewed by the eye in three dimensions, it is perfectly possible to compose great compositions, sunlight inside a woodland will often break up and disrupt them in the final two-dimensional photos.

It’s generally better to restrict woodland photography to cloudy days when the lighting is much softer. As a result, three-dimensional compositions translate well into two dimensions. When light levels are lower (such as just before or after rain), the greens of the vegetation become deep and vibrant, much more than in sunshine. Incidentally, you don't achieve the same effect by photographing after sunset or before sunrise. Although light levels are low at those times, it’s also very blue, putting an unattractive blue cast across the foliage.

Another highly effective time for woodland photography is during fog. This can greatly simplify the often very complex, not to say chaotic, conditions inside a woodland, reducing everything to simple, monochromatic outlines that, if exploited well, can result in some truly atmospheric photography.

In general, gardens and parks are more open environments than woodlands and can often be photographed well in the sunshine. However, the problems with highlights and shadows still hold true for many parks and gardens, making photography in soft light a very good option.

 

White water

This covers any situation with foaming water, such as a waterfall, a fast-running stream, or coastal surf. White water can be notoriously difficult to expose correctly, and with any amount of sunlight, it will tend to burn out into a featureless white mass.

This is particularly so if the white 'splashes' are surrounded by dark zones, such as rock or grey 'solid' water, in which case sunlight will generally create too great a contrast range for the camera's sensor. This is also true—though to a lesser extent—for shoreline surf set against blue water, blue sky and/or yellow sand. The white foam in the surf will still tend towards burning out in sunlight but to a lesser degree.

When photographing the white water of a waterfall or a babbling stream, it’s best to photograph under cloudy conditions, or at least in the shade (if shooting on a sunny day). Sunlight will certainly cause white water to burn out and may even do the same to wet, reflective rock.

So always try, whenever possible, to photograph these environments under a cloudy sky, when the contrast range will be less severe. Even under these conditions, you'll often find the contrast range between the white water and, say, surrounding rock is still close to the maximum the sensor can handle.

 

Details and close-ups

This is perhaps the most commonly photographed subject matter during cloudy conditions. Photographing patterns and details in all kinds of subjects, ranging from a cliff face to a tiny flower, can become a lot trickier in bright sunlight due—once again—to the bright highlights and shadows the sun establishes.

As you come in closer to the details of a subject, highlights and shadows make up an increasingly significant proportion of the whole image. If too extensive, as with woodland photography, it’ll disrupt the impact of those patterns and details.

So, use soft lighting conditions to hone in on such details as the patterns in rock, whether a single pebble, an entire cliff face, building details, or tree bark, leaves and flowers.

 

Building interiors

It’s frequently assumed that building interiors are more easily photographed during sunny weather due to the increased amount of light available. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Bright sunlight pouring through a window will create a huge contrast range that the camera cannot handle. The window itself and the sharply defined pool of bright light that only shines into some parts of the room give a hopelessly uneven illumination. No amount of additional lighting, reflectors or in-computer processing will fix this.

In most situations, it is simpler to photograph interiors on cloudy days—when the ambient light is more evenly spread around the internal space, and any lighting unevenness is more easily resolved. The windows themselves will still be a lot brighter than the internal space and so remain a lighting logistical challenge, but this contrast range—though still quite high—is significantly more manageable than that created by a sunny day.

 

General photographic technique

High contrast versus low

As you can see, photography of certain subjects under cloudy conditions may actually be preferable to doing it in sunlight, generating much more successful and attractive images. But why would this be?

After all, when we look at many of these scenes in sunlight, they look stunning: a lovely woodland or a fantastic waterfall are just two great examples. Why, then, are we saying that they generate better images when shot under a grey sky?

There are essentially two principal reasons, both tied to the different ways in which we and our cameras see the world. The most important difference is our own eyes' far superior ability to see detail in high-contrast situations, greatly outstripping the ability of any digital sensor. As a result, we can readily make sense of the bright highlights and deep shadows inside a sunlit woodland, for example, having no problem seeing the details, shapes, patterns, and of course, potential photographic compositions within some very differently lit components of the view.

On the other hand, the digital sensor is very much more limited in its high contrast-handling ability, with details being lost from bright highlights and deep shadows far sooner in the final images than is the case for our eyes. The result is the loss, or at least significant weakening, of potentially great compositions that we can see with our eyes but that can't be correctly exposed by the camera.

All this is further exacerbated by the second big difference between our eyes and the camera's sensor: our ability to see in three dimensions and the camera's complete failure to do so. Our 3D ability further increases our ability to pick out those potentially great compositions from the background melee, even inside that sunlit woodland.

In photography, on the other hand, all that information becomes compressed and flattened into a single layer, structures, details, colours, highlights and shadows. The more there is, the more confusing and chaotic the 2D image will become. Those burned-out highlights and deep black shadows just add to the confusion.

So, photography of these tricky situations under cloudy conditions helps simplify things for the digital sensor, both reducing the contrast range to one that it can handle, and resolving detail in both the brightest and darkest parts of the scene, cutting back on the potential clutter—the enemy of all good compositions.

 

Photography in low light levels

Inevitably, when photographing under a cloudy sky, the available light levels are much lower than in the sunshine, resulting in a significant impact on shutter speeds and lens apertures. It will become much harder to hand-hold the camera, as the shutter speed will be too low, and it won’t be easy to obtain a large enough depth of field because your lens aperture may need to open up. In other words, you risk suffering camera shake and having too much of the image out of focus.

The inevitable solution is to mount the camera on a tripod. That way, you can use as slow a shutter speed as is needed, coupled with whatever lens aperture you want to obtain as big or as small a depth of field as you like. This is particularly important in scenes with a lot of three-dimensional depth, such as in a woodland or coastal scene, or where the camera-to-subject distance is very short, such as in close-up photography, where the depth of field is small.

When it comes to outdoor portrait photography, this is less of an issue as you want to blur the background. To do this, you would use a fast shutter speed and have the lens aperture wide open (as described above), making it still perfectly possible to hand-hold the camera.

 

To include or not to include sky

Under cloudy skies, photography should be done—as far as possible—with no sky visible in the final images. However, this depends on what kind of grey sky you’re shooting under. If you have a more or less featureless grey sheet above you, then, yes, it’s generally better to screen it out from your images: it rarely makes for a good scene, and often (despite being grey) is a lot brighter than your photo subject, and will often end up burning out. It just won't contribute anything positive to the images.

However, if you have a stormy sky with dark ragged clouds scudding overhead, it can be worthwhile to include it to add drama and energy to the image scene. To make this work well, you’ll probably need to add a neutral density graduated filter (ND grad) to the front of your lens to prevent the sky from being too bright.

 

Getting stuck into cloudy weather photography

With autumn and winter rapidly descending upon us, we can expect a lot more grey, cloudy days in the coming months. So now is a good time to hone those grey weather skills and get stuck into making the most of the sunless days.

They are far from being all doom and gloom!

 

This blog was written by Nigel Hicks, a hugely experienced Devon-based professional photographer. Nigel works with the USA's prestigious National Geographic Image Collection, among many other bodies, and is a Fellow of the British Institute of Professional Photography.

Nigel Hicks runs regular photography workshops in southwest England. To find out more about these go to www.nigelhicks.com/photography-workshops-courses/.

To find out more about Nigel's work, feel free to take a tour of the website at www.nigelhicks.com.

 

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