Sun, glare and shadow.

You've taken a great picture only to find out that it looks washed out or that you can't see detail of the subject very well due to shadow and glare. What's the deal?

The position of light within the environment plays a crucial role in the outcome of your digital pictures. When indoors, you must watch out for low-light as that can play havoc on your images. When outdoors, sun and shadow are the two major problems for home photographers.

As most know, what you see is not always what you get. The image to the left is a great example of this. From the viewpoint of the photographer, the expected image would have been crisp and clear with great color. As you can see, the outcome was not the same as what the photographer saw when the image was taken. In effect, the glare from the sun completely washed out most of the image.

The image above was taken with a cheap Kodak DX-series camera. Utilizing a up-scale camera with more features, settings and a better lense may have allowed the photographer to adjust the camera to take a better picture, but as most Home Photographers know, they have better things to do than piddle around with camera settings. People buy "Point and Shoot" cameras for a reason, changing settings constantly is not something they may have the time or initiative to do.

Knowing that sunshine, glare and shadow can cause these issues, the quick solution is simply to reposition to another location, if possible, in order to take a new picture. The image to the right was taken with the same Kodak within minutes of the prior picture. As you can see it came out much better and actually played into the suns position to get a decent picture. Color is still somewhat washed out due to the cameras limitations, but it is clear enough to be retouched utilizing programs like Adobe Photoshop.

So, as you are outside taking digital photographs, take a couple of seconds to consider the effects that sun, glare and shadow can play within your environment. The time spent will be well worth it.