- This topic has 13 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 1 year, 5 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Hi:) i’m new here and new to photography but i love to take pictures that have the sun’s rays in them. Here are some of the pics i took the other day and i was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on how to make future pics like these better!!
Attachments:
Just stating my own opinion here, but I’d say that real sun rays look better than rays made with a sparkle filter. The rays look too artificial, if you know what I mean. I agree that sun rays look great, but imo they need to be real in order to look good. Don’t get me wrong, if you like the looks of sparkle filter sun rays, go for it. I don’t mind. Like I said, this is just my own opinion. Personally, I’d say sparkle filters are made for photographing Christmas lights and other lights of similar style, but different people have different likes. My preference would be to wait till the rays are actually visible without any additional equipment and photograph that. Yes, I know, the most likely time for the rays to be visible is when you aren’t prepared or are preoccupied and can’t photograph them. But such is life for a photographer. You gotta take the chance when it comes. I thought I had taken some sun ray pics, but a hasty search through my pics resulted in a negative. Perhaps I’ll do a more thorough search soon.
Here are two pics I took. I must admit that the rays aren’t as even in my pics as they are in yours. 🙂 I don’t know exactly what you like, but they’re a sample of what sun rays can look like. Feel free to critique my pics and don’t be scared to give me your opinion.
P. S. Very likely some others on this forum have better pics than mine. I showed you what I could, but I haven’t photographed sun rays much. Hopefully someone can show you some better samples than mineAttachments:
Hi @abigail16! It seems you’ve figured out the aperture trick for sunstars! Good job! (and welcome to Lenspiration by the way!)
I think you (@abigail16) and @nateb might be referring to two different phenomena here. Abby, in your photos, you’ve narrowed your aperture and partially occluded the sun in order to get the “sun-star” effect (which is not usually a post-processing filter, but an in-camera setting—stop down to like f/11 or f/16 or narrower—though you certainly can photoshop these in). The amount of “rays” in the sun-star here depends on which lens you’re using, as it has to do with the way the lens is constructed. A lot of kit lenses will give you six-pointed sun stars (my Canon EF-S 18-200 does that), while other lenses (like my 10-18 or my 50mm or my 17-55) will give you more points. You can pretty much shoot these with anywhere: you need to stop down your aperture (use Aperture Priority mode or Manual and set it to f/11 or higher) and shoot into a bright light source that is partially occluded.
@nateb, I think you’re referring more to a weather phenomenon, and you’re right, it is highly elusive. You need to have—again—a partially occluded sun (trees, mountains, buildings, and thick, low-altitude clouds work well) and then you need something for the sun to light up or shine through. If you’re outside, you need mist or fog (early morning hours right after sunrise are ideal for this!). If you’re inside, a really dusty room will do the same thing. With these, your aperture matters less. These are also harder (though not impossible!) to photoshop in.Now back to the original photos…
@abigail16, I’m assuming you’re trying to use the sun-star effect, and you’re using it well here. One way you could make your images a lot more powerful is to not make the sun the main feature of the composition. Think of the sun-star as an ingredient (like sugar!) and not the whole recipe—you need other ingredients to make it taste good. This is why your first image with the fence in my opinion is much more powerful than the second. There’s a lot to like here: you’ve included the foreground, you shot from a lower perspective, you’ve got the fence as a lead-in line, and then you’ve got a really nice lens-flare acting as another lead-in line. A couple of things you could improve on would be space (the image feels “crowded”) and including a stronger subject (your lead-in lines seem to just point to the back fence… which is okay but could be better). To fix space, I would move a touch closer to the fence and turn your camera a little bit more to the right… or I would jump the fence to put it on the right side of the image so I can show more of that beautiful open sky.
To fix the subject is a lot more subjective… you’ve got to ask yourself “what drew me to this location and made me say ‘I want to take a picture of that'”. Once you figure out what that thing is, try to emphasize it by using the rule of thirds and moving your camera around to remove as many things that could distract from it as possible. (This is one of the hardest things to do in photography by the way and you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to master it).Hope this was helpful! and if you have questions don’t hesitate to tag me. 🙂
— @loganlamarAttachments:
Thanks for the correction, @loganlamar. I’d forgotten about the aperture trick, never having used it myself. Although I’ve never used a sparkle filter either, I’ve seen pics taken using a sparkle filter and when I saw these pics I immediately assumed that’s what she used. But now that you mention it, I can see the difference, in the second pic at least
Thanks @nate those pics are really neat. I like how you captured those sun rays. I haven’t really been able to get any like that yet, but hopefully I’ll be able to soon. I totally agree with you on not using a sparkle filter though lol! Your pics make the rays look so natural, which I really like.
Thanks for clarifying that @loganlamar! I really appreciate those tips you gave; they were really helpful!! I’ll def be trying to implement those in the future. I really like your pic and I can totally see how it demonstrates a lot of those tips you gave me which is really helpful!!
Thanks, @abigail16. Btw, I hope I didn’t sound too fault-finding in my first reply. I mentioned what I thought could be improved on, but failed to mention the strong points of your photo(s).🙈 But if I’d said what I liked about your photos, what I would have said would match closely with what Logan said, so I s’pose there’s not much point in me trying to do it now, cuz it’d mostly be a repeat of what he said
You’re totally good @nateb. I didn’t feel that way at all!! I’m definitely a beginner with all this and appreciate any and all tips lol!
Welcome to Lenspiration, @abigail16! You’ve gotten some great tips here already! My thoughts were along the lines of the comments that @loganlamar made, so I won’t be redundant. But in a nutshell, it looks like you’ve got the starburst technique down pretty well so I’d just work on improving composition in the photos! Keep practicing!
@loganlamar, I appreciated your clarifying comments, as well as the part about the sunrays. I’ve never actually thought about what would cause them to appear!
Thx @lenspirationlydia!!!
Even though this post is about the sun and not other stuff, I would still like to add something that I noticed and that is that the second picture looked a little dark to me I don’t know if that was your intention but, in my opinion, it would have looked a bit better if it was a bit brighter. Beside that, I think everything else that needs to have been said, was already said from previous comments. Anyways those are still pretty good pictures, I think the first one would be my favorite. 🙂
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.