Our Project 52 Week 16: Sun flare

Welcome back to Our Project 52! It’s week 16 and this week our theme is Sun flare.

  Taken with Canon 6D and Canon 35mm 2.0 lens

Settings Aperture:f/2.8 Shutter Speed 4000 ISO 800

Sun flare is one of those beautiful phenomenons that is actually a mistake! The makers of our lenses have worked hard so that we DON’T get sun flare in our lens. That’s what that lens hood is for, to keep those wayward beams of the sun out of our photographs. But the use of sun flare can sometimes take a photo that’s just blah into a wooooow!

 

 Taken with Canon 6D and Canon 35mm 2.0 lens

Settings Aperture: f/ 4.0 Shutter Speed 1/630 ISO 800

And what I really love about Sun flare is that it’s not just for your DSLR. The next photo was taken with my iPhone.

 

Taken with iPhone 5 Edited with VSCOcam

Photography tips for sun flare:

1. The easiest way to get sun flare is during what is called the golden hour. The sun is lower in the sky and makes it easier to get the sun BEHIND your subject. THAT is the key. BUT if you just can’t wait, you can always just lay on the ground like I did in the first photo.( It was taken in the morning).
2. Achieving focus is going to be hard when you are shooting directly into the sun. A trick I’ve learned is to place your hand over your lens, compose your shot, focus, and take away your hand and press the shutter.

Hopefully these photography tips for sun flare really help and you are taking beautiful sun flare filled photos this week!

I can’t wait to see your photos this week! Share them here AND on Instagram.

Head over to Mimi to see what she is shooting this week!