Someone asked me the other day, why was I shooting towards the sun. I was photographing a sports event and from where I was standing, the sun was behind the players. My answer was – I didn’t really care where the sun was. I then went on to explain…

We have no control of the sun and if the event is between me and the sun – so be it. In this particular case I could have gone around to the other side of the field, but to move location is not always possible. For example – at a race track. I can’t always get to the other side of the track and if I could, the pictures may not be worth taking because of the location. So how do I compensate for the position of the sun?

First of all, I have a long lens and a correspondingly long lens hood. This lens hood minimizes the amount of direct sun light falling onto the front lens (sometimes called the optic lens.) The benefit of this hood is, it prevents glare. Glare reveals itself as those annoying bright circular “objects” that are often mistaken for UFO’s, but only by ardent believers in such matter. For the rest of us, they are caused by sunlight falling on the optic lens. For those of you who carry pocket cameras, which of course do not have lens hoods – you will simply need improvise. Use a free hand to shade the lens making sure you hand does not become part of the picture.

Conventional wisdom would suggest that the sun be behind the camera. This piece of advice dates back many decades to when cameras were relatively simple and rolls of film came with small diagrams showing how to position the sun behind the camera to achieve a proper exposure. The problem with conventions is – if we do everything conventionally, best we can achieve is to repeat someone else’s efforts. The other problem we encounter while shooting with the sun behind the camera, is to do with photographing people. Facing the bright sunlight causes people to squint. Also, the hash sunlight makes for very “flat” featureless pictures.

Today, we have relatively sophisticated cameras with a myriad of electronic wizardry designed to calculate a near perfect exposure regardless of the amount of light available and from where it is coming from. So I use auto exposure. Okay, so I lose one or two poorly exposed pictures, but the majority of the pictures are as good as they get. But here’s the bonus – the back light gives a halo effect that gives a whole new dimension to the picture.

So don’t be afraid to shoot into the sun. The effects can often be stunning if not dramatic.