How To Make Beautiful Outdoor Photos With Soft Light

Soft light is an under-appreciated gift from nature. I use it to make photos of flowers, gardens and people. There are also many other situations where soft light helps you create amazing photos. I’ve covered some of them in my recent articles about the golden hour and low light landscape photography. If you go back and look at those (the links open in new tabs) you’ll see that the light in many of the photos is beautifully soft.

What’s so great about soft light?

I’m always surprised by how many photographers think that you should take photos of subjects like flowers, gardens and people in bright sunlight. The photos below show why that isn’t the case. I made the first (left) in direct sunlight. It isn’t a good photo. The contrast is too high and it’s not possible to get good detail in both shadows and highlights. The background has bright, distracting highlights. The light is ugly and there’s nothing I can do to rescue it in Lightroom.

I solved the problem by holding a reflector, still in its cover, between the flower and the sun. You can see the result in the photo on the right. The reflector created shade and meant the flower was lit by soft light. There are no shadows, no problems with contrast and the colors glow. The light wraps around the subject. The distracting background highlights have gone. The quality of light has gone from hard and ugly to soft and beautiful. It’s easy to work on the image in Lightroom to improve it.

That’s the power of soft light.

Finding the right subject for soft light

Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not saying all hard light is bad, and all soft light is good. The photographer’s job is to find the best match between subject and light.

The flower above needed to be photographed in soft light to bring out its color and beauty. On the other hand, some subjects suit hard light better. For example, you can photograph buildings in hard sunlight and create amazing, dramatic black and white images.

What creates soft light?

You’ll find soft light in the shade on a sunny day, during twilight after the sun has set, or all around you on a cloudy day. You can also get it in the golden hour when the sun’s close to the horizon and light is bouncing off clouds or water.

Geography is also a factor as well. The further you get from the equator, the more likely the weather is to create the conditions that give soft light. In tropical latitudes, you need a cloudy day or shade.

Soft light and travel photography

It’s early summer as I write this, the start of a season in which many people go on vacation. If you travel at this time of year then you’re going to get long days full of bright sunshine. That’s fine for snapshots, but problematic if you want to create photos that are full of mood, atmosphere and character. But there are things you can do to help you make beautiful photos, and one of those is to search for soft light.

If it’s a sunny day then look for scenes that are in the shade. These are most likely to be details or vignettes. Think hidden corners and details, like the scene in the photo below. You’re looking at a market stall that’s been closed up for the day. It was in shade when saw it, and I moved in close in to make this image. You don’t get to see the whole scene, because it was too bright and sunny for that. But you get to see an interesting detail that tells you something about the country I was in (Bolivia). A sequence of details like this builds up a picture that shows mood and character far more effectively than photos that show wider scenes.

Detail photos are another subject that suit soft light. I like photographing interesting details that tell you something about the place I found them. I made the following photo in an open air antiques market in Shanghai. The soft light let me capture all the detail in the scene.

Sometimes the best thing to do is wait until the sun is lower in the sky. I made the photo below in India. The sun was quite strong during the day, but towards sunset dipped behind the building. That meant the front of the building was in shade, creating a beautiful soft light that enabled me to make this photo. The colors glow and you can see every detail.

Another option is to make the most of rainy or cloudy days when they happen. Some photographers put their cameras away in these conditions, but it’s the wrong thing to do. A few years ago I spent several days in the city of Hangzhou, China. It was hot, humid, cloudy and rained a lot. But it let me make beautiful photos like the one below.

Soft light for flower and garden photography

As we saw earlier, when you’re shooting photographing flowers soft light lets you capture color and detail and avoids bright, distracting highlights or high contrast. A smart use of shade or a cloudy day provides high quality light that suits the subject.

The key is to make sure that the background is in shade as well as the subject. That way you avoid spoiling the composition with bright highlights. The photo below is a good example of the type of image you can make in the shade on a sunny day.

Soft light is also good for garden photography. The biggest practical problem with photographing public gardens is that most of them close before the golden hour arrives. If you’re visiting on a sunny day your only option is to photograph flowers in the shade. Sometimes you can find hidden corners and details that are also in the shade. But it’s difficult, if not impossible, to make good photos that show the gardens themselves.

The solution is to visit on a cloudy day, or a partially cloudy day when the sun keeps disappearing behind clouds. That softens the light and lets you make photos like the one below. You can see every detail and the colors glow. It’s a much better result than shooting in bright sunlight, which gives high contrast, dark shadows and burnt out highlights.

Soft light for landscape photography

There are times when soft light is perfect for landscape photography. One example I can think of is the kind of soft light you get after the sun has set on a sunny day. This gives you amazing results when photographing seascapes as the water reflects the colors in the sky. At this time of the evening, when light levels are low, you will need to use a tripod and a long shutter speed to get a good exposure. The long exposure blurs the movement of the water creating a beautiful effect.

You can see that in this photo, made with a shutter speed of 340 seconds. The shutter speed is so long because it was nearly dark. You can see the last light from the sun on the left.

It can also be fun to shoot in mist and fog. Autumn is a great time of year to do this as mist combined with autumn colors creates very moody images. Some places also get sea fog, which can be interesting to work in. I made the photo below in northern Spain, before dawn, when mist filled the valleys between the mountains. It’s a different way of photographing a scene that looked completely different later in the day, bathed in harsh light from the sun.

You also get soft light during overcast days. While some photographers would consider this poor light for landscape photography, others use neutral density filters to obtain long exposures that, just like the photo above, blur the movement of water and clouds. They create photos like the one below (often working in black and white), which I made with a shutter speed of 210 seconds.

Portrait photography in soft light

Finally, soft light is absolutely beautiful for portraits, especially of women. I’m a little surprised by how many people, photographers and models included, think that sunny conditions are ideal for making portraits.

Cloudy days are ideal for portrait photography. Take a reflector with you as the light often comes from above the model, creating shadows on their face. A reflector helps you deal with them if that happens.

If you’re making photos on a sunny day then look for the shade. There’s plenty of it around in the late afternoon or early evening. On a sunny day, the light bounces off any surfaces lit by the sun and into the shadows. It’s like shooting with an enormous, and completely free, reflector. The light is soft and beautiful and creates amazing catchlights in the model’s eyes. I made the portrait below late in the afternoon with the sun hidden behind a hill. The soft light helped bring out the model’s natural beauty.

This technique also comes in handy for creating portraits of interesting people you meet while traveling. The woman in the photo below called out to me as I walked down her street in Jodhpur, India. It was a brilliant, sunny day, but luckily her side of the street was in shade, so I asked her if I could make a portrait. This is the result.

Further reading: 52 Flower, Garden & Nature Photography Assignments

The soft light you get on a cloudy or rainy day is a surprisingly productive time of day for natural light photographers. If your choice of subject matter takes you outdoors, then you can use the beautiful qualities of soft light to add mood and atmosphere to your photos.

But what if you’re one of those people who’d like to experiment with using different types of natural light, but you lack inspiration?

A great way to learn how to use natural light is to set yourself assignments – mini-briefs that encourage you go to out and put what you’ve learned into practice. That’s not as easy as it sounds, which is why I wrote my new book 52 Flower, Garden & Nature Photography Assignments. It has an entire section on light, with assignments and inspirational photos designed to spark your creativity and motivate you go to out and make beautiful photos.

You can take advantage of the early bird special and buy it now for just $10. Click here for the details.