Jump for Joy–Cloudy Day Shoots Don’t Have To Be Boring

I live in the Pacific Northwest so we have our fair share of dark, cloudy days. It’s funny when I hear so many photographers talk about how they can never shoot (especially during the winter) because the weather sucks, but the reality is that every day can be a great day to shoot – no matter the weather. It’s just a new challenge.

Here’s a shot that is a great example. Notice how when you hover over it the shot you see the original and the blah overcast day, but when you mouse out you can see that I brought life back to this shot by giving it some vibrant colors. With the upbeat subject and the bright colors, who really cares if it wasn’t a perfectly sunny day?

I shot this with a 1D Mark IV using sRAW for maximum performance and manual mode to ensure that my camera settings didn’t change. Using my 16-35mm at 16mm with the subject close to me (much closer than it seems in this shot) I shot at f/2.8 (because it was very dark and I wanted to keep the ISO as low as possible – I would have preferred f/11 for this one) for 1/1250 sec (to freeze all motion) at ISO 1000 (used auto ISO so the camera chose this to get a proper exposure).

I processed this shot using Portraiture for the skin, Photoshop CS5 and content aware healing brush for removing debris, and Color Efex by Nik Software for the punchy color. I finished off with Lightroom for the crop and vignette.