Technique on Photographing Sun Glare

Angling

• Capturing a lot of sun glare in a photograph requires your photo to have a lot of sunlight. While this may sound like an obvious statement, taking such a picture seems counter-intuitive in practice since it requires pointing the camera directly or nearly directly at the sun. This results in a difficult situation since objects become difficult to see through the camera due to the immense amount of light. It takes time to get used to, but angling directly at the sun is critical for both dramatic and soft-sun glare photographs.

Manual Focus

• The auto focus setting on cameras tells the camera to focus on the brightest image within its field of view. When taking pictures with sun glare, the focus becomes the sun. For proper sun glare photos, you need the focus to remain on the subject (e.g., the object you want the photograph to revolve around). Fix this problem by manually focusing your camera. This takes some practice since sun glare photography creates an immense amount of light through the camera and makes it difficult for the operator to see properly. Get around this problem by taking several pictures at once while adjusting the focus. This increases the likelihood of capturing the photograph you want even though you cannot see properly.

Composition

• Composition involves the careful placement of foreground objects to slightly obstruct sun glare. This technique reduces the amount of sun glare in a photograph, creating a softer picture where the sun's rays don't play such a big role in the final photo. Common composition techniques include taking pictures of the sun through leaves or while partially behind a large mountain range. The key is to use your surroundings to your advantage.

Lenses

• Use different lenses to help filter out sun glare to create a softer look when taking pictures directly into the sun. Fixed focal length lenses tend to reduce glare dramatically. UV filters also help. On the other hand, if you want to capture significant amounts of glare, use zoom lenses and avoid UV filters and lenses with anti-reflective coatings.