Photography is the art of light, featuring the characteristics of light brightness, light quality, light position, light pattern and so on. Normally, for most hobbyist photographers, the most common used light in photography is the natural light. However, there are both advantages and disadvantages for shooting with natural day light. The natural daylight with strong brightness ensures good colour performance. But, if you need specific light temperature and light position, then you have to shoot at the right time to capture the light you want. Especially, for those who love landscape photography, sometimes they spend more time waiting for the right light than taking photos.


If you want to take portraits, you have to avoid the direct midday sunshine. The Magic One Hour is the premier time for night view shooting. Shooting experience is accumulated by countless shootings.


 If you miss the premier time for shooting, the light brightness and angle would be changed greatly and it is more difficult to capture the good photography. Just like the picture below, the contrast is too strong and it covers the specific details.


But nothing is absolute. Sometimes when you think the sun is quite unsuitable for shooting and ready to put away the camera, you can get some unexpected effects.
Backlight, especially low-angle sunset backlight, tends to create a strong contrast of shadows on the subject, resulting in a big light ratio difference, and there is always a lot of detail that cannot be handled both for the background and foreground. Even those expensive high-end lenses featuring better anti-backlight performance, are inevitably influenced by glare and the auto-focus in the case of complete backlighting.


Wide-angle landscapes shooting, macro shooting and portraits can also get wonderful results by the backlight position.  

Here are some for you to take good capturing with backlight:
 

  1. Illuminating a bright background and not filling light foreground at all can get a silhouette effect with strong contrast, which a good atmosphere-rendering.
  2. Use a reflector or flash to properly illuminate the foreground to present more details. And a mini ring light with a clip that is easy to be fixed would be helpful for your photography especially for your selfie with backlight.

  3. When shooting flowers, trees and those are easy to filter light, taking good use of the backlight would add the great sense of texture to the subject. 

  4. When there is a severe halo in the lens, then you should pay attention to the composition and slightly adjust the position of the lens to avoid the flare covering the subject.
  5. Backlight shooting also affects autofocus accuracy. You can choose manual-focus instead.
  6. Avoid eye damage caused by prolonged exposure to sunlight through the viewfinder.

 

Read more:
WHAT IS COLOR TEMPERATURE?
LIGHTING SOLUTIONS FOR YOUR LIVE-STREAMING
LIGHTING FACTS IMPROVING YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY YOU SHOULD KNOW