I was helping some friends put together a calendar with some of my photos. They used Shutterfly to put the calendar together  which gave them the option to add their own dates in. We wanted to have some fun with this, so started adding some of the crazy holidays – we found “Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day”, “Eat Ice Cream for Breakfast Day”, “National Hugging Day” – there is something almost every day. (It is 1/20 and apparantly “tin can day”). It occurred to me these would be great inspiration for  POTD ideas. Here’s a source of those dates.

There is a common misconception that bright sunny days are ideal for photography. It is true that it is certainly more pleasant to be outdoors when it is not raining, but direct overhead sunlight makes for AWFUL portrait conditions.

1. Your subjects squint
2. Overhead sun creates shadows under the eyes, nose and chin.
3. Light colors (and skintones) tend to loose detail.

When I am shooting outdoors in bright conditions – I seek out covered shade which provides directional light. Seek out your inner troll and crawl under a bridge, or the shade of a tree, or under an awning (not a colored one, that will throw your white balance off). Here’s two snapshots of Charlie from a boating outing today. The first was taken under an overpass, and the second image a few seconds later in direct sunlight. These are both candids – I did not tell him to look all squinty and annoyed just to make a point on this blog post- direct sun is just harder on your subjects. It was in going through the images later – and seeing the huge disparity on the quality of light, that made me want to share.

After Blur/Overlay in Photoshop, originally uploaded by mundorff.

I had some images today from our trip to Dexter Reservoir that I wasn’t thrilled with. The mid day sun was bright and didn’t show off the spectrum of colors I wanted to capture. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to take a picture of a covered bridge in front of changing leaves, though – who could? The scene screamed for being captured and turned into a jigsaw puzzle.

The image was boring as captured, as I knew it would be.

However – after applying the steps – exactly as described here with a blur/overlay adjustment in Photoshop, I can live with this.

Image downloads are available for purchase both at maxpreps and Well, Shoot! which would allow you to use on of the pictures on the site to make a custom photo gift like these.