Cloud Photography: 8 Tips for Breathtaking Results
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Loading... - Brenda Gregory
- 20 Oct 2022
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The sky is the single most abstract and dynamic canvas that a photographer could ever encounter; for me, it’s an endless source of inspiration. Plus, the sky is ultra-accessible, and photographing clouds is just a lot of fun.
But cloud photography isn’t without its difficulties. Given how bright the sky often appears, it can be tough to nail the exposure. And your camera will often struggle to focus on clouds, especially when the sky is low in contrast.
Fortunately, there are several easy solutions to these problems, which I share in this article – along with a handful of additional tips and techniques to help you photograph clouds like a pro.
So if you’re ready to make use of the gorgeous photo opportunities that exist right above your head, then let’s dive right in!
1. Deliberately overexpose the clouds
Clouds tend to be bright white, which generally causes camera meters to go haywire. Your camera sees the bright white tone, thinks it should look a medium gray, and then dramatically underexposes the clouds in response, resulting in dull, unpleasant-looking photos that lack pop.
So instead of letting your camera do all the work, make sure you’re set up in Aperture Priority mode or Manual mode. Point your camera at the clouds, note your camera’s exposure recommendation, then boost the exposure by one to two stops.
If you’re shooting in Aperture Priority mode, simply dial in positive exposure compensation. If you’re shooting in Manual mode, then you can technically choose whether to increase your ISO, widen your aperture, or lower your shutter speed – but in general, I recommend making adjustments to your shutter speed and nothing else.
2. Seek out areas of contrast to focus
Camera AF systems often struggle to get clouds in focus. On overcast days, for instance, skies tend to be very flat and low contrast; this is an absolute nightmare, and your camera’s autofocus system will spend long seconds hunting for perfect focus (and often failing to find it).
So what do you do? You have a few options.
First, as I mentioned above, the real difficulty with autofocusing in cloud photography is contrast. If you don’t have contrast, your AF system won’t know what to do, which will lead to lots of frustration and out-of-focus photos.
So set your AF mode to AF-S (also known as One-Shot AF); this tells your AF system to find focus and then lock it. And set your AF area mode to its single-point option. You want to be able to carefully target areas of contrast.
Next, take a long look at the sky and see if you can identify any clear contrast. Carefully position your single AF point over the high-contrast edge, then half-press the shutter button to lock focus.
