As I prepare for teaching at homeschool conventions each year, I like to try and keep the Photo Class fresh and interesting. Some students attend the class multiple years in a row and it’s a teacher’s worst nightmare to face a room of bored and disinterested people. 🙂 To change things up, I try to add at least one new presentation.

The new one for 2025 is: Maximizing Natural Light, an exposition on the five distinct times of day (including midday!) and understanding the pros and cons of each so that you, the photographer, can make the most of each lighting situation you find yourself in.

The presentation is a spinoff of Video #8, Exploring Different Times of Day, from the Explore with Your Camera Video Series. Maximizing Natural Light contains new content, though, which means new example images, and that sent me to my archives to dust off and edit some updated photos.

As I browsed through my collection, I found a photo that suitably illustrates a common problem found with midday lighting. Have you ever been at a beautiful park, or maybe taking photos of your dog, in the middle of the day and find that the lighting in your pictures looks flat? When the sun is overhead, it’s really not possible to find a pleasing angle of light.

A Beautiful Park

The above photo of the lake through the treetops was taken midday from the top of Aiton Heights Observation Tower in Itasca State Park. Julianna and I were in North Dakota for a wedding last year, just a stone’s throw from the border of Minnesota and a few hours drive from the sprawling beauty of Itasca State Park. Several friends had highly recommended this park to us, and it made a perfect camping spot on the way home after a very fun but very full weekend.

We got up early to photograph the serene and iconic headwaters of the Mississippi River!

Then we took the photogenic Wilderness Drive.

Even though it was still October, we were so far north that there was not much fall color left on the trees. But the larches were amazing! And you just take pictures of what you do find.

It was getting pretty late in the morning now, but there was one more place I wanted to stop. Aiton Heights Observation Tower seemed like a nice spot for a photographer.

A Midday Scene

One of the main things I run into with landscape photography is having a hard time finding sweeping vistas because of trees getting in the way. Fire towers solve this problem! From this tower, you could see clearly in all directions!

But, as you can tell, the lighting is still flat. Not the time of day you’d expect to get stunning photos. In editing, I did try to make the following photo look better, amplifying the little backlight that did exist.

You just have to think differently under midday light! I tried to photograph different patterns and shapes I saw in the forest below me.

It was a pretty spot. But with Julianna and Mordecai waiting in the van and more miles to put on the road, I ran out of time to work the location more. These photos would have to do. Later, I edited them as best I could to make them as naturally attractive as possible, but with that flat, midday lighting there was only so much I could do.

A Point Well Illustrated

Though no photos I took from Aiton Heights are going to go in a calendar, they did do a great job of illustrating a point I wanted to make in the Photo Class! My point is this: midday light is less than ideal, so in order to make the most of it, you have to think differently!

There are 11 tips I’ll share in the class on maximizing the light of midday that I hope will give some practical help and equip these photographers to do their very best in non-optimal settings.

If you would like to attend the Lenspiration Photo Class at a convention this year, check out the Workshops Map to see if I’ll be in your area! In Florida, the FPEA Photo Class is sold out, but there’s still room at other events. Looking forward to seeing you there!