OK, so let’s get down to brass tacks. How to get an image with an awesome blue sky. I personally am a big fan of getting it straight out of camera…I’ve tried making a white or gray sky blue in post process…and honestly it takes WAY too long, and more often than not, looks worse than if you handed the image to your three year old and told him to color it blue for you. So how do we get it, and once we do get it, how do we enhance it?

I’m going to post three images I’ve shot in the past few weeks. They are straight out of camera. Zero retouching. One of the images was slightly under exposed, so I did give it a 1/3 stop bump in lightroom, but other than that, what you see is what came out of my little black box. I’ll break down each image, where the lights were placed, and what lighting I used.

First, let’s talk about a few basic rules of thumb (that I’m kind of making up, but they seem to work for me…so again, if you have better info or techniques, please share)

1. Use a fill flash. Almost always. If you want a great blue sky, you’re going to have to expose for the sky, which will under expose your subject. You’ll have to use another light source to light up your subject.
2. If you use off camera flash, place it directly opposite the sun – for example, if the sun were at 10 o’clock, place the flash at 4 o’clock. If you don’t have off camera flash, try using a reflector (your skies won’t be quite as deep blue, as you’ll need to adjust your exposure, but it will be better than nothing) or popping up your on-camera flash and using it as a fill
3. Start with a narrow aperture, f/11-f/16. Adjust your shutter speed to bring in the color of sky (probably around 125-200). Add your flash, and tweak the flash settings and your aperture to properly expose your subject. I shoot with my flash set to manual and at about 1/4 power, and adjust my aperture. If it’s way off, then I’ll adjust the power settings on the flash unit.
4. Experiment. A lot…

Image 1

Aperture: f/16.          Shutter: 1/250.           Flash: Nikon Speed Light 1/4 power.          Light Modifier (ie umbrella, softbox, etc): None

This image was shot with the sun at camera 10 o’clock, flash at camera 4 0′clock. It was about 6:45pm. Bright sky, harsh shadows, full sun. I basically followed all the rules above. I used no modifier on my flash because I needed as much punch as I could get out of the speed light to overcome the harsh sunlight.

Image 2

Aperture: f/16.          Shutter: 1/250.          Flash: Nikon Speed Light 1/4 power.          Light Modifier (ie umbrella, softbox, etc): None

This image was taken on June 17 and was shot exactly the same as the previous image, just an hour later and with with one exception. I decided to add a third light source at camera 2 o’clock. You can see it popping off there on the ledge. I added it to give the subject a little rim lighting and make him pop just a little more from the background. Why? I don’t know. I just thought it might be cool. Remember the last rule above? Experiment…

Image 3

Aperture: f2.8.           Shutter: 1/2000.          Flash: None

This shot was taken at 7:55 PM on June 3. I basically broke all the rules stated above. Again, I remind you of the last rule…experiment. The sun was lower in the sky, and behind me, at approximately camera 7 o’clock. It was still pretty bright outside, and we were in full sun, as you can see by the shadows around her. The first problem with this type of scenario is a squinting subject. It’s very difficult to have your subject looking toward a bright sky and not have them squinting. However, this was overcome by me being below her at the bottom of the stairs, so she was looking down toward the ground, rather than the sky. This however, presents another potential problem – dark pits in the eyes area. This was overcome by having her on the white cement, which acted as a gigantic reflector, opening up any shadows. Her white dress helped as well. So in the end, I was able to expose for her face, and because of the sunlight and great fill light provided by her environment, I was able to have a fast enough shutter speed to get a great exposure for the sky as well.

Once you’ve got blue in the sky, the post process tweaking is simple. I personally use Adobe Lightroom for the majority of my workflow. If you’ve got some nice color in your sky, with a few minor tweaks of your Hue, Saturation and Luminance (HSL) sliders and you can put the final touch on those skies. Just be careful, it doesn’t take much to kill what could have already been a great sky.

So hopefully this was helpful. Please feel free to post any questions and or comments or tips in the comments section. Thanks and good luck!