Picture This!

Almost as important as the amount of light for a photograph is the direction the light is coming from. In the next three weeks, I'll show you how the direction of light effects your photographs. It doesn't matter what kind of camera you use, light properties and direction remain the same.

Frontlighting is light illuminating the front of a subject. The best kind of outdoor frontlighting is shown below when I captured the Resort Monorail heading to the Magic Kingdom while some anglers fished in the Seven Seas Lagoon. The sun was still low enough not to cast too much of a shadow below the monorail and evenly illuminated it and the fishing boat.

The Resort Monorail is frontlighted by the morning sun as it heads to the Magic Kingdom.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/800s, f/8, 200 ISO, EV -0.3, 200mm Focal length

A variation of the sunny frontlight is the Overcast Frontlight. This is very nice, soft, even light and brings out colors and textures hard to see in bright sun. The ostrich on Disney's Animal Kingdom's Kilimanjaro Safari is a nice example. This was taken on one of the first morning safaris so the sun was behind me when I took this.

Overcast frontlighting as shown by this ostrich on Disney's Animal Kingdom's Kilimanjaro Safari.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/200s, f/8, 200 ISO, EV 0, 65mm Focal length

Something you have to be careful of when shooting with overcast skies is to try and keep the sky out of the image as much as possible. The overcast sky acts like a huge light diffuser but is very bright. In the above photo, I wanted the jeep following mine in the picture or I would have framed it with only the ostrich and without the sky.