Sun

A couple evenings ago my daughter was wearing a brightly colored outfit and I asked her if she wanted me to take a picture of her. We grabbed a large piece of lace my children were given for play and she was happy to wrap herself up in it. The sun was low in the sky and I saw this as a good opportunity to get backlighting. As my 2 year old is not going to be still for long, and I had no assistance at the moment, I didn't even try to use a reflector to bounce light back onto her from the front, although this would have been nice. She wanted a photo with our dog (he's old and rather deaf). Once I got his attention and told him to sit, I had to move my daughter so she wasn't between the dog and the camera. I intentionally placed myself so I could see the sun coming through the lace, and I captured the moment before either subject moved on. I wanted a fast shutter speed so any movement from either subject wouldn't cause blurring, so my ISO was set at 800 so I could get a shutter speed of 1/800 second with an aperture of 6.3 (I wanted both of them relatively in focus). I also used evaluative metering, increasing the exposure by 2/3rds of a stop.

Below I decided to make use of flare, which is caused by rays of light hitting the lens. Some photographers use flare a lot. It is a stylistic choice. It used to be that it was something most photographers considered a mistake until some started using it intentionally. It is relatively popular now, although you will find photographers who still really do not like it.

In editing I raised the black point to increase the contrast, warmed the color temperature, and desaturated as well as reduced the vibrance until I liked it.

Here is one with even more flare! There is even a large sunspot where the light directly hit my lens.