sun flare re-cap, oh ya

It's a little overdue, but I thought I'd re-cap the sunflare discussion we had at the beginning of the summer. Although many of us are well into fall, there is still some fantastic flare to capture!

First of all, there is some debate about whether shooting into the direction of the sun is hazardous to your camera. Do some research and decide for yourself if you are concerned about your equipment. But, if you'd like to avoid any potential problems and play it safe, try adding flare with Photoshop! You can try it yourself by going to FILTER>RENDER>LENS FLARE. It is a super fun thing to play with and you can add it to pictures that already have some flare to enhance the effect even further.

Our readers suggest shooting in the evening, when the sun starts going down. Try positioning your shot so that the sun is either directly behind your subject, or slightly to one side. We also got suggestions to have the sun at the top of the frame so that getting a good exposure on your subject is a little easier. Our flare catchers mentioned setting the sun on the edge of your lens, or even of a building.

The popular choice is to use a high f/stop (like f/22!) The smaller the aperture, the more defined your flare will be. (I am an f/1.8 junkie, and I was able to score some flare over the summer. Using a wide aperture can also work, it's just likely to be less defined.)

Different lenses have different flare qualities, so try a few to find one that works for you.

Get low and try different angles.

Practice, practice, and wish for good luck! It's a tricky thing to master, so don't give up if at first you don't succeed.

One of our fave flickrers, mainemomma {kristin}, wrote a tutorial on flare and also started the group flare fridays. If you are interested in flare, definitely check it out!

Here are some great flare pics from our {TML} flickr pool for some inspiration!

photo by keli_h

photo by pink.goldfish

photo by raehein

photo by mainemomma {kristin}

photo by rebecca lily

Get out and shoot to conquer!