Living in Florida (The Sunshine State) means shooting in the harsh sunlight quite often. To make great pictures, one needs to learn to tame that beautiful fireball in the sky. In this post, I am going to share one of the best ways to turn the harsh sun into gorgeous light.

When shooting in natural light, the golden hour is your friend. That is the hour right after sunrise and the hour right before sunset. During golden hour, the colors are warm and the low angle of the light is flattering on people's faces and does not cast harsh shadows. As the day progresses, the angle and relatively small size of the sun in the sky start to cast unflattering shadows on your subjects, particularly in the eyes. Not to mention the extreme brightness making everyone squint. Note the hard shadows, bright shiny highlights, and squints in the image below!

So, unless you are going to limit yourself to shooting only during golden hour, you must find a way to deal with the harsh sun. There are several ways to do this: find some shade, turn the subject around and shoot against the sun, or use a reflector. All valid ways to get around the problem of harsh light, but also each with its challenges. Shooting in the shade can take away the sculpting property of directional light and the picture can end up looking flat. Shooting into the sun can cause silhouetting, lens flare, or an overblown background (all things that can also be used intentionally as an artistic expression). The reflector, I try to avoid in the harsh sun because throwing another bright light source on an already overwhelmed subject can be quite unpleasant if not painful.

So, my favorite way to deal with the harsh sun is to use a diffuser! A diffuser is a translucent piece of fabric that is used to partially block and spread out the light from the sun. One of my favorites is the Lastolite Trigrip. This diffuser comes with several different covers so it can also be used as a reflector. The diffuser is most effective when it's very close to the subject. The closer the better. It takes away the harshness but still keeps the direction of the light.

Here are the two shots side by side. The Left without a diffuser and the right with a diffuser.

Notice the picture on the right, with the diffuser, how the shadows have been softened, the highlights are broader and more subtle, and the subject can now open her eyes! The diffuser makes the lighting smoother and softer all around. Unless I'm going for a specific artistic look, I will always go for the diffuser in the harsh sun. In my opinion, it produces the most flattering results for a portrait.