Bright sunshine can be a gift to the photographer, creating deep shadows and contrast that accentuate shapes and forms and lend your images a vivid intensity. But the flat, gray light of an overcast day has its own special ambiance and mood that can be a better fit for more contemplative scenes.
There’s nothing like bright sun shining in a clear blue sky to inspire the urge to grab your camera and head outdoors to take pictures. By contrast, nothing so reinforces the urge to stay indoors and hunker down on a comfy couch as the bleak, windswept damp of a gray, overcast day. There’s a natural tendency to view such weather as doubly disagreeable for outdoor photography, offering, as it does, the potential misery of getting cold and wet for the reward of struggling to create compelling images in a flat, unforgiving light that seems to suck the texture out of every scene.
But this perspective may underscore a failure of the imagination—an unwillingness to step outside of a creative comfort zone that could cost the photographer some wonderful photographic opportunities. That is the theme of the thoughtful, personal perspective presented in this new video from The Photographic Eye.
This video really resonated with me, as I have realized a great deal of enjoyment and creative opportunity in my own photography, shooting in the flat, gray light of the kind of overcast days that it describes. There is a sort of quiet, subtle, and understated stillness to this light that can really complement some subjects, the broken-down and abandoned farm buildings featured in the video being a perfect example.
This video serves as a very gentle exhortation to reconsider the often-overlooked allure of the subtle light that a cloudy, overcast day can bring to your photography. It nicely demonstrates how a willingness to reframe your photographic perspective can yield new creative opportunities that you might have previously missed.
A hidden gem? I don't know that there is anything hidden about it. For many types of photography, we read the weather updates continually, looking for overcast days in the forecast so that we can be sure to get out and shoot when the sun isn't shining. Last fall, I had to cancel two cross-country trips because there was nothing but sunshine at the places I had planned to travel to. Overcast conditions are what we long for and wait for and base plans on, and there is nothing hidden or obscure about that at all.
Your experience of this Tom, might not be the same as many photographers. I see a lot more "sunny 16" photos out there than I see grey and overcast.
For just general overall outdoor photos, yes. But for outdoor macro work and for outdoor work done in woodlands, under a tree canopy, I see way way way more work done in overcast conditions. Most of us work in several different genres of outdoor photography, hence most of is have certain shoots that we can only do in shade, and certain shoots that we can only do in sun, etc.
Currently I want to photograph the Northern Pintail courtship flights before all the female Pintails find a mate for the upcoming year. That is a shoot that I only want to do in full sunshine, or a mix of fog and sun (fog, but NOT clouds or overcast). So I am checking the weather every day to see when there will be a string of clear days in the Sacramento Valley of northern California.
Conversely, when I want to photograph Whitetail Deer in deciduous forest habitat, and do so during the rut when the females are actively coming into heat, I demand overcast / cloudy conditions for that. If the forecast calls for only clear sunshine, then I am forced to abandon my plans and shoot deer in a different part of the country, where they spend time in meadows and prairies instead of in the woods.
In either case, overcast days are not "hidden". Conversely, the weather is something that we are very conscious of at all times, as we know exactly what types of images are most optimally captured in sunshine, and which are most optimally captured in diffused light.