I still remember talking to a friend years ago about one of her relative’s wedding. The Met Office had predicted cloudy skies for the Big Day, and she was very disappointed because she thought the photos of the event wouldn’t look their best.
To her great surprise, I said that on the contrary, cloudy skies could be a blessing for wedding photographs. Weddings usually take place in the early afternoon, and when the sun is out, it casts deep shadows on people’s faces. Like “racoon eyes”, where the eyes go nearly black in the photograph because of the shadows cast by the sun light coming from above.
I don’t and won’t shoot weddings, but the above story is still relevant for what I do. I don’t like to shoot people in the midday sunlight. I much prefer to wait until the sun is low on the horizon and the light is softer and warmer. In midday, I look for shade or hope that the clouds will come to the rescue and diffuse that early afternoon light.
An other advantage of an overcast day is that the colours are generally more saturated. This works well for flower photography for example. In the case of landscapes, it can work too if one doesn’t show the sky, which is generally uninteresting. But one can get lucky and find some interesting clouds in the sky to complement the vibrant colours of the landscape, as in the few pics shown here.
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