Why do photographers prefer cloudy days?
If you follow any photographers or if you read any blogs about photography you’ve probably come across this whole idea that photographers prefer overcast or cloudy days instead of sunny days. On the surface, this appears to go against common sense. After all, wouldn’t a nice sunny day be better than a cloudy or overcast day? The answer really depends on what it is that you’re photographing. Today we’re going to be talking about photographing people and I will go into detail as to why photographers will prefer to shoot a person on a cloudy day instead of a bright shiny day.
Before we get started we need to cover some things that we’re going to be talking about. Let’s talk about light. In particularly, let’s talk about hard light and soft light.
For anyone that doesn’t know the difference between hard light and soft light, hard light is a light source that is small in relation to the subject. That explanation has been going around for a long time but there are still people that don’t understand what this means so let’s break it down.
as I said in my previous paragraph hard light is a light source that is small in relation to the subject. An example of these would be the sun. Now, I know what you’re thinking. The sun is not small the sun is huge. Yes the sun is huge but it’s also really far away which makes the source of the light equal to a spotlight about the size of the moon. Another source of light that would be considered hard light is simply a light bulb. The result of hard light is a very clearly defined shadow. This shadow is what makes the hard light hard. It is generally considered that hard light is not very complimentary when photographing people. Hard light will cast very defined shadows on the face of your subject. This is not considered very flattering. In order to get around this we have to use soft light. Soft light is the complete opposite to hard light, that is, instead of the light casting a very defined and sharp shadow, the shadow is very soft, not very defined, and in some cases there’s no shadow at all.
When photographing people, soft light allows you to light that persons face evenly so that you have no hot spots (bright highlights) or very harsh shadows.
So how can you soften light? Well, there are many tools that allow you to do this if you’re using artificial light. The most common one is a soft box or an umbrella. If you’re using artificial lighting and you point that light towards your subject the light will be hard. By placing some diffusion material between the light and the subject the light can be softened. This material is usually a white translucent material that is placed between the subject and the light. The light illuminates the translucent material and the translucent material lights the subject. Of course the translucent material needs to be larger than the light in order for the light to be softened. The other way that you can diffuse light to make it larger do you something like a reflective umbrella. This works by pointing your light to the inside of an open umbrella. The inside material of the umbrella will be either white or shiny so that it can bounce that light back onto the subject. These photography umbrellas are quite large and so by doing that, you’ve turned your smaller light into a larger light by lighting the inside of the umbrella and then having a large source of light reflecting back onto your subject.
But what if you’re not using artificial lighting? What if you photograph using natural light? This is when a cloudy day comes in handy. Essentially by having a cloudy day you’ve turned the whole sky into a soft box. The sun is no longer lighting your subject. The clouds are. The sun illuminates all the clouds making the clouds glow and it’s that glow that then falls onto your subject. The result of these is extremely soft light that is very flattering when photographing portraits. In order to be able to simulate this with lighting it would take a lot of gear and you would need people to help you. That is why you will always hear photographers say that they prefer cloudy days because it makes everything easier. Now, it’s impossible to control the weather. But next time you’re planning to shoot some portraits you might want to have a look at the weather forecast and pick a cloudy day. I promise it will make your life easier and your photos are going to look better.