Photography 104 - 5 Tips for Gorgeous Nature Photography Lighting

5 Tips for Gorgeous Nature Photography Lighting

In this article, I’m going to show you how to use light to create nature photography masterpieces.

And I can guarantee that they work.

Why? Because they’re the tricks that I use myself. All the time.

In fact, these nature photography lighting tips can be your photography secret weapon. They’ll get you creative, original photos, no doubt about it.

You just have to be willing to try them out!

Let’s dive right in.

Wait until last light for a breathtaking sky

Nature photographers love to shoot during the so-called “golden hours,” the hours just after sunrise and just before sunset, when the low sun casts a beautiful golden glow over the landscape.

And it’s true. The golden hours are a great time for nature photography.

But if you want truly stunning nature photos, I recommend you go beyond the golden hours.

Instead, focus on shooting at the very last light, when the sun is touching the horizon.

This is the time when the sky often goes brilliant with colors. This is when you get a sunset sky, one that can absolutely blow your mind.

And this “last light” makes for truly breathtaking nature photography shots.

If you’re a landscape photographer, this probably seems obvious. Nearly all landscape photographers shoot at sunset.

But even if you’re not a landscape photographer, I encourage you to shoot at this time. Because sunsets aren’t just good for landscape photos. They also make for beautiful backgrounds in macro photography, bird photography, and flower photography.

So here’s what I recommend:

Get out to shoot during the golden hours. Take some nice shots. But then stick around until the sun is touching the horizon. And start incorporating some stunning sunset colors into your images.

Note that you don’t have to stop when the sun goes down. The colors remain deeply photogenic.

So feel free to keep shooting until you no longer have the light to capture photos!

Photograph in inclement weather for moody images

While golden light is great for nature photography, it’s not the only type of lighting that works.

In fact, one of my favorite types of lighting is the opposite of golden light:

Dark, cloudy lighting. Or lighting in bad weather

At first glance, this type of lighting seems questionable. After all, during bad weather the light gets low, and it’s often hard to have enough light for good exposures.

But here’s the thing:

Bad weather creates a mood. It creates an atmosphere. And it can give your nature photography something that’s hard to find under other circumstances:

Drama.

For instance, if you photograph when the skies are stormy, you can produce dramatic, breathtaking landscapes.

And if you photograph in rain or snow, you can create a sense of isolation and solitude that can absolutely take your photos to the next level..

Find backlit subjects for stunning silhouettes

Backlit photography isn’t all that common in nature photography.

But it should be.

You see, backlighting can add a lot of drama to your photos. This is often at the cost of color intensity, because the heavier the backlighting, the more underexposed your main subject becomes.

This can be a problem unless you’re willing to embrace it. By increasing the exposure, you can blow out the background but capture a beautiful foreground.

Or, even more dramatically, you can let the main subject become a silhouette.

Here’s how it works:

Wait until the end (or the very beginning) of the day, when the sun is low in the sky. Position your main subject so that it’s between you and the sun. You don’t want the sun itself to be featured in the frame, so you can cover it with your main subject, or keep it just outside the shot.

You also want to make sure that your main subject doesn’t intersect with anything. Ideally, the subject should be framed against the sky, so you have powerful dark-light contrast.

Then switch your camera over to manual exposure. Choose an aperture like you normally would, but dial in a very fast shutter speed. You want your main subject to be underexposed.

And then…

Shoot. Take a number of shots, experimenting with different shutter speeds. You want to capture a beautiful background, but with a completely dark foreground. It may take a bit of testing before you arrive at the perfect shutter speed, and that’s okay.

I also want to emphasize that you can capture beautiful silhouettes of any subject. Trees, flowers, birds, and leaves all look great.

You just have to make sure you get the right backlighting and a carefully positioned subject.

And your shots will look stunning.