Reader Paige asked in the comments to my Making the Most of a Cloudy Day post about how to photograph trains on a cloudy day. His question prompted me to put together my thoughts on the topic…
The first thing to understand is what the clouds do. They essentially act as a diffuser for the sun and provide a much more even light over the subject and background. Depending on the thickness of the clouds minor shadows may exist or none may be present which can open up opportunities that wouldn’t normally exist on a sunny day.
The thickness of the clouds also regulates the brightness of the scene. For example some of our dreary Northwest days have very little light thanks to very thick clouds which contain lots of moisture. As a contrast east of the mountains, where more moisture is wrung out of the clouds, a high overcast will exists which lets plenty of light through providing more brightness.
High overcast in eastern Oregon provides reasonably even, diffused light on the subject.
On a cloudy day dramatic light and beautiful skies are not not something that will be in play. These factors usually cause me to focus more intimately on the subject. I’ll zoom more closely to eliminate an even and generic gray sky. I find a cloudy day is a good day to focus on details as the light can be very even which allows the entire scene to be lit at the same brightness.
Thanks to even light everywhere detail photos look fabulous on cloudy days.
On the other hand the clouds can be part of the subject. They provide an excellent top frame and when the clouds are interesting I’ll work to include them to give a sense of the day to the image. Clouds and rain are part of our environment so including them as part of the photo is certainly something that can add impact and help explain something about the subject. When I was a kid the BN suffered a slide on Stevens Pass and a news photographer was on scene to capture the train stopped at the slide. In the photo the rain drops and the gray skies were both visible which just added so much more context to the mud across the tracks.
Clouds can be part of the subject to offer framing or drama.
Behind the camera I tend to make the same exposure decisions I would make on any other day to get the best exposure on the subject. I determine what is more important about the scene and set my aperture, shutter, and ISO to match. Since cloudy days are often darker I find myself using higher ISOs. Generally photos exposed properly at high ISO don’t exhibit the amount of noise you see in a darker image so I don’t hesitate to head up to ISO 800 now and then (ISO 800 is the practical upper limit on my 20D). As with any photograph, I will take a few test photos to make sure my exposure choices are appearing on the back of the camera to be what I’m looking for.
Cloudy days are a good time to practice exposing to the right. I usually expose my images to the point where the brightest part of the scene just starts to get blown out (the red blinking areas on the image when viewing the histogram). This usually offers the best balance of light and dark areas and gives me something to work with in post. On cloudy days using this method will help to draw the maximum brightness out of a scene without over exposing.
Exposing to the right without blowing out highlights too much.
In Lightroom I use the same techniques as I would with any other photo. Since the colors tend to appear more saturated in a cloudy day photo I watch very carefully how much vibrance or how deep the tone curve is I apply. I tend to keep less contrast in a cloudy day photo to help bring out the details that are hiding in the depth of the shadows. Since our train subjects tend to be a bit dark on cloudy days I will also use the local adjustment brush to brush in a bit of brightness or to reduce contrast on the subject. Many times just a touch of brightness on the subject will really make it stand out from the flatness of the rest of the scene. Clouds can also become a bit washed out with exposing to the right so I’ll use the local adjustment brush on them too to bring them back to look natural.
Judicious use of the adjustment brush on cloudy day subjects can bring them out of the darkness. Final output is here.
Those are my thoughts on cloudy days. As with much of photography there isn’t necessarily a formula but I find these guidelines work for me. By all means if something moves you to do something that seems contrary because you think the product will be something special, DO IT! Photography is about creating so step outside of the norms and capture it your way.
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