Let’s face it, for wedding and portrait photographers who work primarily on location, we are often at the mercy of the existing weather to determine what type(s) of light are available to us for any given session.  Unfortunately living in Chicago can present a few challenges when it comes to relying on the weather.  Photographers love to schedule portrait sessions in the late afternoon or early evening hours because the sun is lower in the sky, has a nice warm color, has more “direction,” and just frankly makes everyone and everything look a lot prettier.

So what do you do when your 5:30 scheduled session is greeted with a thick layer of gray clouds, and no hope of any natural sunlight?  You have three options:

• Reschedule the session and hope that you get better sunlight on a different day.  But there’s no guarantee with that either.
• Go ahead and complete the session and try to make “lemons out of lemonade.”  And while you can always warm up the photographs later on with Lightroom of Photshop, you can also add contrast, and maybe selectively lighten and darken some areas, the bottom line is flat light is flat light, and does not have much dimension or “snap.”
• Finally there’s a third option when you don’t have any available sunlight:  Bring your own sun!

Take a look at the two engagement photographs below.  The first picture is made in the “photojournalistic,” “natural light,” “available light” style, simply using the gray, overcast sky as the primary (and only) source of light for the portrait.  It’s not bad, and like I mentioned above, I was able to add some contrast and selectively brighten a few areas, but this couldn’ve been a bit better with some extra light…….

…..and then there’s the second picture.  All this took was a little extra light from an off-camera light source.  Just a little extra light coming from the side and slightly behind the subject gives the effect of the sunlight that normally would be there if it wasn’t for several thousand feet of thick cloud layer.

I suppose a Photoshop master could duplicate the effect after several hours in front of the screen, but frankly I have better things to do when I can get it right straight out of the camera.  So next time you think that a weather forecast that includes the words “overcast,” “gray,” “dismal,” or “mostly cloudy” might create a challenge for your photographer, just remember that a photographer can always carry a little bit of their own sun in their camera bag!

Oh, and for the photographers interested in the technical setup, it’s a single Canon 580 EX flash on a light stand, triggered with a RadioPopper PX transmitter and receiver, ETTL….just set it up, point, shoot!.