Shooting on a grey day.

[thefonz78]

As a lot of us on the forum are from sunny United Kingdom we are use to grey days. We have more of them than any other days. This is not a great recipe for nice sunset landscapes. But does this mean we can't go out and shoot? I would like peoples shoot ideas that we can do on grey days!

I guess night cityscapes can be shot on grey nights.

[dan123]

its a hard one for me, i have no city scapes to shoot, Generally i spend those days looking and visiting new locations, and taking test shots, Ready for when the light is good, Grey days are great for long exposures if you can get the detail in the sky, Also good for macro as the diffused light is a lot softer and more pleasing on Flowers and things,

[OldBoy]

The last three months have been rubbish with too many cloudy days in Birmingham. I've been shooting Swifts, but the light is so bad I'm not getting details. In the summer months you would expect a few days with clear blue skys all day, but we haven't had any since April!

On grey days you can shoot trees with their fruits, insects including butterflies or landscapes where you limit the amount of sky. People shots can be quite good, as you don't get the harsh shadows you can get in sunny conditions. Building can also look good on such days but again you have to limit the amount of sky.

[GeoffWessex]

A completely grey sky is not much good for anything spectacular, but it does have a soft light which can make photography very good, not having to worry about extreme contrasts.
Sunsets, I think, need some cloud to work properly - as long as you can get the effect of the sun lighting up the clouds from underneath.

[DigiDiva]

I often find the sky gets blown out on my landscapes on a grey day. It's clearly my lack of experience and I maybe need to practice bracketing too (never tried it yet). I agree about trees, flowers, macro's as ideas to shoot on cloudy days.

[markgozz]

Grey days and a slow lens like my Sigma 18 – 250 brilliant for abstract motion blur and zoom burst , no need for filters or a tripod .

Mark

[Jeff Morgan]

Grey days are the best for:
Waterfalls, when the sun is on them the contrast is too high. Dull days allow longer exposures to blur the water. Just don't include the sky in the image.
Forests, inside woodland the contrast can just be too high, so a flat day can really help.
Lastly for close-ups of flowers, the soft light with a silver reflector (or tin foil) will give you super shots.
I'm told there is a perfect subject for every light, it's just knowing and looking.
Cheers, Jeff

[GeoffWessex]

Originally Posted by DigiDiva

I often find the sky gets blown out on my landscapes on a grey day. It's clearly my lack of experience and I maybe need to practice bracketing too (never tried it yet). I agree about trees, flowers, macro's as ideas to shoot on cloudy days.

Yes, it happens. While the sky remains relatively bright, even on a grey day, the ground doesn't get the same illumination.... so a 'straight' exposure (enough to give enough light for the ground) will always make the sky wash out.... a good shot of sky, to get some texture, will make the ground almost completely dark.

There are (at least) two solutions....
a. Bracket your shots (quite wide bracket, like at least 2 stops apart) and then open both in an editor, with one image on a layer on top of another, e.g. the shot with a good ground at the bottom, the shot with the good sky on top. Then, with a layer mask, remove the dark foreground from the upper layer. (A layer Mask is better than the Eraser for this, if only because if you remove too much you can put it back in again)

or

b. Get the hang of Graduated Neutral Density filters.... a fairly basic set consists of nine filters: 3 different strengths (1 , 2 or 3 stops) plus 3 different 'graduations' (hard, medium, soft) between the dark and the clear. You can get stronger filters but most people use them in combinations.

[feeing]

I look forward to the day when my photography is fine tuned enough to worry about "grey days" ;-)

For now I can only say for sure that, I am less happy taking shots on particularly very bright sunny days.

Maybe living in Scotland all my life is the reason for this, cause the world knows every day is a summer day in Scotland *smile*

[SnapShot]

I always think it's still worth going out on a grey day, as someone else said it's good for doing recce shoots. If you are up early and have the sea close by it can still be worth heading out as there is a chance of some sun as it creeps over the horizon before it hits cloud cover. But as with all things photography, you never know if the lights going to be right. I thought it didn't look to good the other day when I got up early to take photographs but I still went out and things didn't turn out to bad.
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