Available Light On A Gloomy Day

Overcast cloudy day acted like a giant soft box producing extra soft, wrap-around light.

This is a counterpoint to my previous blog.  Of course you can still take beautiful pictures with ambient light on an overcast and gloomy day.  Many of my friends at DPSC has proven that.  With so many models and so little time, many avoided the complication and time consuming task of setting up strobes.

All photos in this blog were taken at sundown when diffused sunlight was still soft but at much lesser intensity.

I managed to take a few snaps of the model featured here later during the day - at sunset.  That was when the white sky was not so bright anymore and light cast on the model was just soft, shadowless and lovely.  She has such soft and flawless skin and I thought of complementing that with soft light as well which is already available with ambient.  Light is fading fast and with so many others wanting to photograph her, I just didn't had time to set up my strobes.  So I set my camera to an acceptably fast shutter speed to avoid motion blur and increased the ISO to 400 (my usual setting for shooting in low light) after a few test shots, I was convinced that ambient is sufficient to produce balanced exposure for the subject and background.

Soft and low ambient light provided a balanced lighting on subject and background.

I didn't take that many shots of her.  I was happy enough with the few I managed to click.  So there you go.  The best time to shoot (although it will be short) in lighting conditions like this is at sunset or just as soon as light start to fade.

Cheers,

alexdpx