Have you ever heard the saying in photography…’bad weather is good weather?’. Storms bring interesting clouds, dramatic shafts of sun, rainbows and lightning. All these things are great subject matter for photography. Bring on the storms.
But it is a little different when we talk about lighting. You arrive at your destination ready to go, but the light is ‘bad’. Nothing will shoot well in this ‘terrible light’. You pack up and head home…Or do you?
I think of lighting in three ways. Light you hope for, light you are given, and light you create. But most important of all…there is no bad light. What separates groups of photographers are those that pack up and go home, and the few that stay and create something in the light they have. Maybe they just focus on different subject matter. Maybe they go a different creative direction. Or maybe they bust out their speed lights and create their own light. Every photographic situation is different, we just need to adapt to it. You never call your editor on assignment and say ‘sorry I didn’t shoot because the light was bad.’ You might only have a few hours or days on a shoot, and you are being hired for your ability to create magic out of the mundane!
I just returned from some incredible black bear photography in SE Alaska. Cree and I went down to scout a new trip, and we had an amazing time. A main focus of this workshop will be photographing black bears in the rainforest. During our time photographing there we had lots of ‘perfect’ overcast lighting, but we also had some direct sun. When the sun came out other photographers started mentioning how harsh the light was, and packing up their gear. All I could see was incredible rim lighting and shafts of sun illuminating the bears!
Modern digital files have incredible dynamic range. Adding fill and reducing highlights in post production brings new life to images. Photographing a black bear with bright sun back lighting the animal might seem like a bad idea, but look at the photo above. This lighting is something I create with portraits using studio lights. Great separation, dimension and acuity all created because of direct sun…the ‘bad’ kind of light.
One image really stood out to me. The bears were feeding on pink salmon. This area has one of the largest runs in SE Alaska, and there were literally thousands of fish in the river. One bear climbed up the hillside into the forest and paused a moment to look down at the creek. He was fully backlit by the sun, and right at that moment he decided to shake off the water. I call these type of bear images the ‘spin cycle’, and this bear did not disappoint. Sparkling water flew in a circle from his body, glistening in the bright backlit sun. Without the sun illuminating the bear and water, this image would not have looked nearly as good. Sometimes bad light is good light.
We just posted our Alaska Black Bear workshop. Come join us and photograph the incredible black bears of the rainforest.