Skills of shooting clouds well

Lead: Cloud is a blooming flower in the sky, the most beautiful scenery in the sky, and the theme that landscape photographers are happy to shoot. Here are some tips for shooting clouds, which I hope will help you:

1. Different forms and beat methods

Clouds are varied in shape. It is very important to adjust the shooting method according to the shape of the cloud.

For a large continuous cloud, you can consider shooting a big scene with a wide-angle lens to reflect its majestic momentum:

If the clouds in the sky are scattered and divided into blocks, you can use a telephoto lens to select one of them with interesting and beautiful shape as the protagonist and the other clouds as the foil.

It is suggested that the central composition should be adopted, and the proportion of "protagonist" should be appropriately increased to better express its form.

When shooting a scene, you should also pay attention to keeping the "body" of the "protagonist" as complete as possible, and don't let part of the edge of the scene frame be cut off:

The most taboo of cloud photography is that there are many incomplete clouds in the picture at the same time, which makes people unable to tell which one is the main body. The picture lacks primary and secondary, and there is no focus.

Let's look at a counterexample:

The center of the picture is empty, and there are many clouds cut off by the view, which makes the picture appear chaotic because of the lack of focus.

Even if the sky is blue and beautiful, it can't save this photo. Everyone should take a warning ~

2. Moderate exposure

There is a certain light difference between the sky and the clouds. If the map also contains a large number of ground scenes, the light difference will be even greater. How to expose it correctly has become a problem that must be considered.

If you don't want to take a silhouette, but you need to keep the dark details, the first thing to consider is to balance the light difference. If possible, install a medium gray gradient mirror.

When in use, aim the gradient of the medium gray gradient mirror at the light-dark dividing line of the picture to darken the sky without affecting the ground scenery;

Application effect of medium gray gradient mirror

If there is a lack of relevant equipment, shoot in HDR mode, or try to shoot in the early morning or dusk, avoiding the fierce sunshine at noon and avoiding backlighting to narrow the light difference.

Sunset is very suitable for shooting clouds. Not only the light is soft, the light difference is small, and the exposure control is convenient, but also the bright and warm sunshine often dyes the clouds with gorgeous colors, which is very beautiful:

Specifically, children's shoes that have confidence in their own technology or need to accurately control the picture effect can use the spot metering mode.

In the spot metering mode, the basic principle of selecting metering points is to aim at the "middle tone" of the picture, that is, the bright part is dark or the dark part is bright. The dark part of the cloud is a good photometric point.

Through the live view function, you can see the picture effect under the current metering value on the LCD screen, and adjust the metering point based on this ~

The red dot is a suitable measuring point.

After selecting the metering point, press AE-L to lock the current exposure value, and you can move the viewfinder to re-compose and shoot ~

If you are not confident in choosing the metering point, you can try to take photos with average metering first, and then slowly adjust the exposure compensation. This is not accurate enough to control the picture, but it is more convenient.

In addition to the first time, you can also turn on the "Highlight Alert" function.

Highlight warning function

When the highlight warning function is turned on, the overexposed part of the photo will turn bright white. According to the number of this part, lower the ev appropriately and shoot again ~

3. Ground scenery and composition

Just shooting clouds will make the picture boring, and adding some ground scenery can effectively enrich your picture.

When shooting a panoramic view of large clouds, it is advisable to add ground scenery such as mountains, seas, plains and extended roads as a foil to show the atmosphere of the picture:

When taking such photos, try to avoid putting the horizon/sea level in half of the picture. This balanced composition will make the picture look old-fashioned and quite boring.

Instead, it should be placed in the upper and lower third of the picture according to the dichotomy, and you can choose to highlight the sky clouds or the ground scenery according to the actual situation.

Because the ground scenery is beautiful, let the ground scenery occupy two-thirds of the picture.

Of course, you don't have to stick to the "trichotomy". If the ground scenery is really boring and the clouds are beautiful, it is ok to put them on the edge of the picture or even not to shoot at all:

It is also a good choice to put isolated trees, houses and other scenery with size recognition significance in the front and middle scenes and use comparative composition.

Trees and houses are separated, and large clouds form a sharp contrast between less and more, small and big, and the picture is more impactful and connotative.

A solitary small tree forms an excellent contrast with the thick clouds.

There are more trees, and the contrast effect is much weakened.

It is also a good choice to enlarge the foreground scene and try to take a view and compose a composition.

The branches and leaves of trees are the best framework, with naturally extending posture and rhythmic outline, and the contrast between green and blue sky and white clouds is also quite high:

Pay attention to the proportion of the frame scene in the picture.

The picture frame is too small to attract attention and can't play the role of "providing shelter" that the picture frame should have; In fact, some people complain that the frame above is not big enough, but I think it is enough. )

If the frame is too large, it will attract the attention of the audience too much, resulting in a messy picture, regardless of priority:

It looks good, but the main body becomes a branch instead of a cloud.

Try a special skill

It is very important to take photos with clouds as the main body and capture the three-dimensional sense and texture of clouds. Besides using polarizers, you should try some special techniques, for example, shooting in black and white.

Black-and-white photos are more "sensitive" to light and shade levels without color interference, which has a miraculous effect on expressing the three-dimensional sense of clouds:

Another method is long exposure. Fixing the camera with a tripod and setting a long exposure time can make the cloud feel flowing.

Generally speaking, the exposure time should be set at about 30 to 40 seconds. After all, the clouds are slow (unless it is windy), so it is usually played at dusk.

If you want to be exposed for a long time during the day, please wear ND glasses to prevent overexposure. The higher the value of ND mirror, the better the dimming effect. A piece of ND 1000 can expose you in broad daylight for a few minutes!

By the way, there is a rumor in the long exposure world that "long exposure can't be played all the time, it will burn the shutter." I heard it when I first came into contact with photography.

Now I want to solemnly refute the rumor. Nowadays, the shutter curtain of the new camera is metal, and it is no longer afraid of high temperature like the early camera. This rumor is out of date, please expose it as long as you like ~

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