Understanding Sunlight

No matter how good a photographer you are, you can’t completely control the way the sun affects your footage. It moves in your scene (more quickly the closer you are to sunrise or sunset). It also can vary greatly in quality and quantity. The longer you’re shooting in one location, the more aware of the sun you’ll need to be (Figure 6.1). Changes from shot to shot can become jarring when you edit the footage together because visual continuity can be broken.

Figure 6.1. Finding a consistent exposure of the bright sky and shadowy sidewalks required a balancing act. Keeping my exposure in the middle to avoid clipping highlights or shadows was especially important because this was a tilted shot. Bottom: Positioning myself so the tree blocked the sun reduced the chance of lens flares on my camera. Photo by Vanelli.