Ever notice how sometimes you get a big streak of bright and pixilated sunlight going through your photos when taking pictures on bright sunny days? Like in these photo below: See how that streak of errant and unnatural looking sunlight cuts through and essentially ruins these photos? How to prevent sun streaking in photos For some [...]
Published on December 18, 2010
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Ever notice how sometimes you get a big streak of bright and pixilated sunlight going through your photos when taking pictures on bright sunny days? Like in these photo below:
Sun streaked photo
Example of a photo ruined by sun streaking
See how that streak of errant and unnatural looking sunlight cuts through and essentially ruins these photos?
How to prevent sun streaking in photos
For some time I wondered how I could get rid of these sun streaks, and then arrived at a simple solution:
If you hold your hand out and over the top your camera as though you were shielding your eyes from the sun on a bright day, you can often block these sun streaks from appearing in your photographs. Sometimes it takes a little jostling of your hand position and the angle you hold it at, but you can usually move it into a position that properly shields your camera from the sun enough to take a good photo without sun streaking.
Examples of how to hold your hand to shield the sun from your camera
Hold hand above camera to shield it from the sun
Example of a photo taking while using this tip
Good photo of beach taking while using this tip
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About the Author: VBJ
I am the founder and editor of Vagabond Journey. I’ve been traveling the world since 1999, through 91 countries. I am the author of the book, Ghost Cities of China and have written for The Guardian, Forbes, Bloomberg, The Diplomat, the South China Morning Post, and other publications. VBJ has written 3706 posts on Vagabond Journey. Contact the author.
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5 comments… add one
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December 18, 2010, 11:55 pm
LinkCool tip Wade–there’s the price of admission right there;) I’ve gone from hardly ever taking pictures or movies to where my camera’s almost an extension of my arm. I keep it simple.
When golfing I film others on the golf course, specialize the movie for them, and upload it to Youtube. Then I’ll send them the link via email. It’s always a big hit. With one golf professional, I took a few quick pictures and video and created for him his own web page.
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December 19, 2010, 9:54 am
LinkIt is great to always have a device to snap a photo with you, and this is becoming more and more popular all around the world with the advent of cameras in cell phones. Now everybody is taking pictures of everybody, really interesting stuff.
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December 19, 2010, 5:21 pm
LinkEven more important than shading is to ensure your optics are clean. Even with the sun behind you, on a bright day, you can get shadows and bright spots.
One of the biggest problems with this kind of interference is that you can’t always see it on the camera so you continue taking pics, thinking all is well, then when you look at them on the ‘puter the pics look like crap. From the voice of experience.
Bob L
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Very true, Bob, very true.
I actually inspected the lens of my camera to make sure that it was decently clean before writing this — I did not want some camera literate person to jump me with, “This happens because your lens is filthy, you idiot.” But I can say that a dirty lens also causes light blotches on photos. When taking photos on sunny days especially, a clean lens is vital.
I have also learned this from experience haha.
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